RecallOptic provides an indicator of product recall strengths and weaknesses enabling businesses to quantify readiness against standards including BRC Global Standard for Food Safety (Issue 7) and BRC Global Standard for Consumer Products (Issue 3).
CrisisOptic quantifies business resilience in ten areas, from governance and risk management to operational response with the Crisis Plan section having a heavy weighting. Clients click through answering ‘yes, no, partially or not applicable’ and it gives a score to see if they are strong or weak.
It is based on international best practice for crisis management including BS11200:2014.
Weighted assessment
Using a weighted assessment system, it generates a Business Resilience Score and visual dashboard presentation based on examination of 112 data points.
Risk, issues and crisis experts from Instinctif Partners then prepare a report which can be used to inform policies, procedures and capabilities to strengthen processes and preparedness.
Robert McAllister, senior consultant, said generally organisations find themselves managing a recall and not being particularly well pre-prepared.
“Large companies have good recall procedures, they have a visible brand and have been making stuff for years. Companies that are weak are ones that have grown quickly through acquisitions, they are not culturally aligned, with different standards across the business,” he told us.
“The tools were not developed to specifically target one product or one company, they are based and set against the BRC Standard for Food Safety and Consumer Products.”
McAllister said one tool could be used without the other.
“In the BRC Standard you need a specific recall plan and RecallOptic looks at recall side. CrisisOptic is for overall strategic preparedness to look at any potentially damaging event, it could be people related or an IT related event. Where there is an overlap is on the training and communication side and stakeholder and communication side,” he said.
“It is not going to replace HACCP/TACCP, they are complementary systems. RecallOptic looks at preparedness to deal with a recall. One question is about HACCP/TACCP and how company uses risk and that feeds into the recall readiness score.”
Two-month free introductory period
RecallOptic and CrisisOptic are free for a two-month free introductory period, based on registration qualification criteria, and then cost £5,000 to access. Businesses can apply for their own secure dashboard.
Andrew Caines, group technical director of Cranswick PLC, who was involved in the beta-testing of CrisisOptic said businesses need to measure how well their organisation can withstand a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
“The Turnbull Report established standards of risk management back in 1999 and since then businesses have been crying out for a quick way to evaluate how resilient they might be in the event of a crisis,” he said.
“CrisisOptic delivers precisely such insights in a swift and straightforward way. It’s the most powerful way I have seen to measure an organisation’s ability to bounce back from setbacks, keep going in the face of adversity, and adapt to change.”
Instinctif Partners said it had worked with Cranswick on business resilience for years but there is no current contract with them.
Benchmark against best practice
Floyd Jebson, consultant, said the tools took five months to develop.
“There was a gap in the market; a need for tools to benchmark any company against international best practice and we set weighting based on our experience,” he told us.
“It can also be important to employ in a large well-established company, they can benefit as nobody is perfect, maybe they are weaker in some areas than others.”
Jebson said CrisisOptic is more focussed on resilience of a business to deal with all manner of crises.
“At the heart is preparation as a business has to continue in the face of crises. If they get a low score on Crisis Management plan, for example if they don’t have one, they can go away and create one or get Instinctif Partners to help by using our in-house knowledge and experience,” he said.
“People are used to doing things online; business transactions, shopping or banking on a regular basis, it is the way things are going.”
Both tools incorporate Instinctif Partners’ crisis management methodology developed while working with clients from global brands to government regulators and SMEs.
Victoria Cross, who leads Instinctif Partners’ risk, issues and crisis team, said the tools are game-changers for business resilience, anti-fragility and risk and crisis management.
“Until now it’s been impossible to quickly identify strengths and weaknesses across an organisation and comprehensively compare the results against a peer group.
“But this is exactly what our Optic tools provide. They are fast, accurate and will enable organisations to focus finite resources on the specific areas where they are most exposed.”