Crisis & continuity management

When a crisis hits, its effects can impact your organisation, the ecosystem in which you operate and even society as a whole. Every crisis challenges your organisational response capabilities, so it's crucial to be prepared.

Is your organisation prepared to manage a crisis? 

Although not all shocks to your company or organisation will necessarily unravel into a full-blown crisis, PwC knows from experience that the way organisations prepare for and respond to disruptive events will determine their overall ability to mitigate a crisis, recover, and ultimately emerge stronger.

PwC can support your organisation through the critical phases of a disruptive event, and assemble a team of multidisciplinary crisis specialists to guide you to the best possible outcome. We assist you locally to weather the storm, and you can also rely on the deep experience and global reach of our PwC Network to support your organisation when and where you need it.

What should you do to prepare for crisis management, now and going forward?

What should you do to prepare for crisis management, now and going forward?

Our PwC crisis management experts have assisted numerous private and public entities, before, during and after a crisis, by providing guidance through the following phases.

What should you do to prepare for crisis management

Step 1: Preparation

At PwC, we strongly believe that forewarned is forearmed. We help organisations build resilience before a crisis hits, raising confidence and awareness to ensure strong and effective leadership during a crisis situation. Our core crisis preparedness solutions help assess and improve your capacity to respond. 

  • Assess: By creating situational awareness and understanding your existing capabilities, we’re able to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Through our in-house developed Business Impact & Risk Analysis, we establish your operational resilience baseline and assess your continuity strategy to offer you tailored advice for continuous improvement, prioritisation and resource allocation.
  • Design: Rather than a periodic ad-hoc response to isolated incidents, PwC experts treat crisis and business continuity management as a holistic, repetitive activity throughout all layers of your organisation. By taking a pragmatic approach to business continuity and crisis management, organisations will see a greater delineation of roles and responsibilities, increased confidence of senior management and a better understanding of the value of their brand and reputation. 
  • Train: All crises are by definition high-stress events, so making the time and space to familiarise your crisis team with their roles and responsibilities is crucial for any effective response strategy. PwC offers structured training sessions that are focused on crisis management techniques such as defending strategic intent, stakeholder mapping, threat awareness, incident handling and business continuity management. Ensuring an adequate level of training among your core team members will increase the effectiveness of their decision-making, resulting in more cohesive, ordered and confident responses.
  • Simulate: While nothing tests theory quite like reality, proactively exercising roles, processes and techniques truly distinguishes organisations that are able to effectively manage a crisis situation. Investing the time to practise response strategies in realistic scenarios enables you to further identify gaps and strengths within a safe environment. PwC can help you design and facilitate various crisis exercises, ranging from table-tops to complex cross-silo crisis simulations, both on a local and global level. 

 

Step 2: Respond

Although preparation is key, actual decision-making can still prove to be disjointed in times of crisis, resulting in lost time, capital and public trust. PwC can provide assistance when a crisis hits, and guide you through each phase.

We’ll mobilise a multidisciplinary team of experts to help you get to the core of the situation so you can understand, prioritise and address the problems, building confidence with your stakeholders while taking back control.

  • Mobilise: A well-run organisation should have up-to-date crisis and continuity plans in place, as well as a dedicated crisis management team to lead the response. PwC has extensive knowledge and experience in drafting and reviewing continuity plans and programmes, incident and crisis plans, and running crisis project management offices (PMOs). We can mobilise quickly to assess the potential impact of the crisis.

    PwC has multidisciplinary capabilities and a wide range of services to assist your organisation in times of crisis, from forensics to tax and legal advice, from IT support to cyber security incident response services, from supply chain to HR consulting, and from regulatory and compliance services to financial restructuring. 
  • Stabilise: Adequate crisis management results in one of the most vital organisational commodities: the space to think and to make the right decisions with confidence. PwC helps you maintain control of your crisis response, from the management of strategic challenges to the establishment of a single platform of truth for your communication with internal and external stakeholders. We’ll guide you in the creation of a crisis command centre, or help you define shortcomings and make adjustments to existing structures.
  • Strategise: PwC’s specialists help you strategise by providing the necessary technical, functional and managerial expertise to identify and implement short-, medium- and long-term change objectives. By capitalising on lessons learned, your organisation can implement change and leverage opportunities to emerge stronger from a crisis situation.

 

Step 3: Emerge stronger

The effects of a crisis can be long-lasting, and there should always be an eye on the future. After the initial mitigation and stabilisation phases of a crisis, PwC supports you as you recover. 

We can help you document the lessons-learned and identify opportunities for improvement. Whereas crisis response decisions have to be fact-based, we can investigate the crisis’ root causes, leveraging on the experience of key responders, and conduct in-depth reviews where relevant to help bolster your overall organisational resilience. 

Our multidisciplinary PwC team can also assist you with culture and change management - often overlooked while actually requiring permanent attention - and design a tailored roadmap for improvement. And we can aid in various ways with its implementation. We’ll help you learn from the settling dust and capitalise on these lessons-learned and opportunities from improvement.

 

Get the PwC Crisis App: Crisis management expertise at your fingertips

Get the PwC Crisis App 

In times of crisis, we’ve got you covered. To ensure the swift notification and deployment of your crisis team and our specialists, PwC developed a Crisis App for mobile devices. 

Crisis management expertise at your fingertips

Via the Crisis App, you tap into deep crisis management expertise in the field you need, from cyber incident response and fraud, to business continuity and legal assistance. The PwC Crisis App features rapid notification of crisis contacts, and guidance on taking the first steps in case of a crisis situation:

  • Instant connection with our crisis consultants

  • SMS notification for your key crisis contacts

  • Instant virtual meeting room

  • Crisis guidelines for various scenarios

Find out more about the PwC Crisis app

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Contact us

Bruno Deraedt

Bruno Deraedt

Director, PwC Belgium

Tel: +32 493 24 04 02

Roy Coppieters

Roy Coppieters

Director, PwC Belgium

Tel: +32 477 81 49 11

Bart De Win

Bart De Win

Director, PwC Belgium

Tel: +32 479 46 79 57

Connect with PwC Belgium