Modern enterprises need real-time information

Over the past decade, the ways in which we pro­duce and con­sume infor­ma­tion have evolved enor­mous­ly. The glob­al health and eco­nom­ic impacts of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic have accel­er­at­ed change fur­ther, push­ing the bound­aries of poten­tial risks to the enter­prise.

The breadth of enter­prise risks has been expand­ing for some time now, grow­ing at the rapid speed of dig­i­tal adop­tion and tech­nol­o­gy-fuelled glob­al­i­sa­tion. For busi­ness lead­ers, this means that a threat to phys­i­cal loca­tions can come just as eas­i­ly from a data breach as it can from a local pow­er cut. Or threats to their brand’s rep­u­ta­tion can sur­face on social plat­forms they aren’t even invest­ed in or aware of, rather than a sin­gle in-per­son cus­tomer com­plaint.

Before Covid-19, the real-world con­se­quences of a poor or slow response to a cri­sis spanned sharp declines in share­hold­er val­ue, exec­u­tive res­ig­na­tions and impacts to brand rep­u­ta­tion, cus­tomer loy­al­ty, employ­ee reten­tion and more. Then, dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic last year, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of fail­ing to pre­pare for the unex­pect­ed, and under­es­ti­mat­ing or over­es­ti­mat­ing the poten­tial impact across busi­ness-crit­i­cal func­tions, became painful­ly clear.

Though end­less, enter­prise risks can be broad­ly cat­e­gorised into four seg­ments: oper­a­tional, busi­ness intel­li­gence, cyber, and rep­u­ta­tion and brand man­age­ment, each with its own sub­cat­e­gories. Oper­a­tional risk, for instance, includes sub­cat­e­gories of asset pro­tec­tion, exec­u­tive pro­tec­tion, phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty, trav­el safe­ty, human health, logis­tics and deliv­er­ies.

“Real-time infor­ma­tion about emerg­ing risks and dis­rup­tive events across the key seg­ments of the enter­prise is vital for deci­sion-mak­ers.” So says Jason Edel­boim, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer and pres­i­dent at Dat­a­m­inr, whose AI plat­form for real-time event and risk detec­tion enables tens of thou­sands of users at hun­dreds of organ­i­sa­tions to learn first of break­ing events world­wide, form effec­tive mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies and respond con­fi­dent­ly as crises unfold.

While most organ­i­sa­tions recog­nise the impor­tance of real-time infor­ma­tion in cri­sis response, not every­one inter­prets the term in the same way. Dat­a­m­inr com­mis­sioned a For­rester sur­vey of more than 400 pro­fes­sion­als in the UK, US, Aus­tralia and New Zealand respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing risk and com­pli­ance at com­pa­nies with annu­al rev­enues exceed­ing $500m. When asked to define “real-time”, their answers ranged from sec­onds to months.

The respon­dents were divid­ed in their views, with 47% say­ing that real-time infor­ma­tion is data cre­at­ed some time in the past day. Some of these said min­utes or sec­onds. The oth­er 53% said it is data that’s between a week and a quar­ter old. Break­ing that down fur­ther, 8% of risk pro­fes­sion­als saw real-time infor­ma­tion as data from the past few sec­onds, while 12% thought it referred to data cre­at­ed with­in the past three months.

It was also clear from the sur­vey that inflex­i­ble tech­nolo­gies and siloed process­es are a hin­drance, mak­ing real-time infor­ma­tion less acces­si­ble when it is most need­ed. It found that only 43% of enter­prise cri­sis-response teams include the HR depart­ment, for exam­ple, while only 33% include the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions team.

“At Dat­a­m­inr, we deliv­er action­able, real-time infor­ma­tion about emerg­ing risks and impact­ful events as close to when they occur as pos­si­ble – often with­in sec­onds,” Edel­boim says. “Every depart­ment needs real-time infor­ma­tion that’s tai­lored to its spe­cif­ic needs, shar­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty of risk detec­tion across the enter­prise. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, func­tion­al silos are com­mon.”

He con­tin­ues: “As mod­ern cri­sis man­age­ment is a shared exer­cise and dis­rup­tions can impact every func­tion, it’s vital that all depart­ments have clear­ly defined areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty as per the four main seg­ments of risk, and that lead­ers allow for a rapid, coor­di­nat­ed response dur­ing a cri­sis. A siloed approach in today’s enter­prise risk land­scape is one of the great­est risks of all.”

In terms of how organ­i­sa­tions are approach­ing risk man­age­ment and cri­sis response, the sur­vey found that more than 80% of risk pro­fes­sion­als thought that access to real-time infor­ma­tion has nev­er been more nec­es­sary. Well over 40% said that they were plan­ning to imple­ment, or expand their imple­men­ta­tion of, a real-time alert­ing plat­form in 2021.

The study also demon­strat­ed that the incon­sis­tent use and under­stand­ing of real-time infor­ma­tion hin­ders strat­e­gy and action. Eight out of 10 sur­vey respon­dents agreed that it is impor­tant to have access to real-time infor­ma­tion that affects their busi­ness, even though only 16% accu­rate­ly defined real-time infor­ma­tion as data that’s no more than a few min­utes old.

While man­ag­ing risk is chal­leng­ing, it doesn’t have to be entire­ly daunt­ing. With crises diver­si­fy­ing and hap­pen­ing at the speed at which infor­ma­tion spreads, the val­ue of real-time infor­ma­tion is immea­sur­able against the weight of not hav­ing an ear­ly sight of impact­ful dis­rup­tions. Whether it’s a cyber breach or a PR mael­strom, achiev­ing an accu­rate, holis­tic pic­ture of the size and scope of a cri­sis is essen­tial to mak­ing bet­ter-informed busi­ness deci­sions.

Espe­cial­ly in the case of glob­al enter­pris­es, real-time infor­ma­tion about an inci­dent thou­sands of miles from head­quar­ters could influ­ence a deci­sion affect­ing oper­a­tions in sev­er­al regions. And, for the employ­ees and exter­nal stake­hold­ers in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of a break­ing event, a hyper-local view of that event as it unfolds is cru­cial for front­line deci­sion-mak­ers to be effec­tive.

“Dur­ing a cor­po­rate cri­sis, every sec­ond counts,” Edel­boim says. “Rel­e­vant, up-to-date infor­ma­tion is a cru­cial input to cri­sis man­age­ment. Incor­po­rat­ing real-time infor­ma­tion into your busi­ness or function’s crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion sys­tem clos­es the gaps between an emerg­ing risk becom­ing a cri­sis, and your response to pro­tect your peo­ple, assets and, ulti­mate­ly, your brand.”

He con­cludes: “Busi­ness­es of all sizes and indus­tries ben­e­fit great­ly from map­ping out risk man­age­ment plans that describe clear roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties, and use real-time infor­ma­tion as the North Star in the ear­ly detec­tion of emerg­ing risks and crises for coor­di­nat­ing a tru­ly uni­fied response.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it dataminr.com

Q&A: Early detection gives companies the edge

Helen Sut­ton, senior vice-pres­i­dent of EMEA and APAC sales at Dat­a­m­inr, reveals the cru­cial role that real-time data is play­ing in man­ag­ing the sheer mag­ni­tude and breadth of enter­prise risk

What have been the main bar­ri­ers to busi­ness resilience over the past year?
“An enterprise’s abil­i­ty to adapt to the pan­dem­ic era has become an indi­ca­tor of resilience. That said, most busi­ness­es’ resilien­cy strate­gies have been put to the test in the past year. And most of those chal­lenges were down to not hav­ing enough infor­ma­tion or not hav­ing it at the right time to make crit­i­cal deci­sions quick­ly. Lead­ers must con­nect the dots among the grow­ing diver­si­ty of risks, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and gaps they have dis­cov­ered dur­ing this tur­bu­lent peri­od and equip deci­sion-mak­ers across the enter­prise with real-time infor­ma­tion to help them solve real busi­ness prob­lems in real time.”

How vital is advanced, intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy to man­ag­ing enter­prise risk effec­tive­ly?
“Hav­ing the right archi­tec­ture is essen­tial. It’s impor­tant to assess the gaps in sup­port, skills and the total risk iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and response frame­work first and then invest in advanced tech­nol­o­gy that can effec­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly play the roles you need. A base­line respon­si­bil­i­ty of any func­tion leader is to dri­ve process inno­va­tion. Deci­sion-mak­ers who under-utilise tech­nol­o­gy are slow to inno­vate and unable to adapt to the rapid growth of the infor­ma­tion land­scape. They will fail to grow both their func­tion and their busi­ness.”

How can organ­i­sa­tions ensure they iden­ti­fy an evolv­ing risk before it’s too late?
“An unex­pect­ed event can occur any­where at any moment, rad­i­cal­ly affect­ing peo­ple and oper­a­tions. Organ­i­sa­tions need an ear­ly and clear line of sight into a devel­op­ing sit­u­a­tion, with addi­tion­al con­text, to enhance their deci­sions as the inci­dent unfolds. Real-time infor­ma­tion is cru­cial for enhanc­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al agili­ty, sus­tain­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and respond­ing with speed and con­fi­dence. This is espe­cial­ly true as pub­lic data sources con­tin­ue to expand and diver­si­fy, span­ning social media, infor­ma­tion sen­sors, blogs and the deep web.”

How does Dat­a­m­inr sup­port enter­pris­es in this area?
Think of Dat­a­m­inr as your first lay­er of cri­sis response. Our AI plat­form process­es bil­lions of units of pub­lic infor­ma­tion dai­ly, search­ing for ear­ly indi­ca­tors of risk, so you don’t have to do that man­u­al labour and risk miss­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. The tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the first warn­ings of high-impact events to users across an enter­prise to enable more effec­tive risk mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies and faster coor­di­nat­ed respons­es.
Dat­a­m­inr has detect­ed mil­lions of glob­al, nation­al and hyper-local events since its first patent in 2010. Our ini­tial detec­tion of the Covid-19 virus from local Chi­nese social media plat­forms such as Wei­bo, at 9.11am East­ern Stan­dard Time on 30 Decem­ber 2019. This pro­vid­ed our cus­tomers, which include glob­al cor­po­ra­tions, pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies, NGOs, and news­rooms, with the ear­li­est warn­ing in advance of the CDC announce­ment sev­en days lat­er, and the WHO’s report ten days lat­er.

Can you reveal some com­pa­nies you’ve worked with and how they use your tech­nol­o­gy?
We work with hun­dreds of cor­po­ra­tions in dozens of indus­tries, includ­ing more than half of the For­tune 50. We have a sig­nif­i­cant foot­print in retail, finan­cial ser­vices, tech­nol­o­gy, tele­coms, phar­ma, insur­ance, auto­mo­tive, real estate, trans­port and logis­tics. Our val­ue is indus­try-agnos­tic and our cus­tomer base, which includes Gold­man Sachs, Voda­fone, L’Oréal, Net­flix, Dyson and Shell, reflects that. Our cus­tomers rely on Dat­a­m­inr for real-time alerts to pro­tect their peo­ple, brand and phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al assets every day. They’re con­tin­u­al­ly uncov­er­ing new use cas­es in areas such as phys­i­cal safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, rep­u­ta­tion risk and cri­sis man­age­ment, busi­ness intel­li­gence, logis­tics and cyber threat detec­tion.

What is your vision of the future of enter­prise risk?
The future of enter­prise risk is expan­sive. About 95% of the 150,000-plus data sources that inte­grate into our plat­form didn’t even exist in 2009. One can imag­ine that the risks com­ing at the onset of new social plat­forms and pub­lic data sets in 10 years will dif­fer from today’s ones. The only way to pre­pare for that is to under­stand how the infor­ma­tion land­scape is chang­ing and be able to access the right infor­ma­tion at the right time. We’re at the fore­front of real-time event detec­tion, but we have only scratched the sur­face of the poten­tial use cas­es.

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