Strategies and actions to increase resilience in SMEs
On 15 April, the European Alliance Against Coronavirus discussed how to increase resilience in SMEs with Veronica Elena Bocci from DITECFER. The session took place in the frame of the Spanish Cluster Congress 2021.
Veronica highlighted that disruptions happen at a higher frequency than we might think and that we need to differentiate between resilience as a community property and resilience as the individual capacity of SMEs.
At company level, vulnerabilities can reside within these areas: demand planning and inventory management, supplier network structure, transportation and logistics networks, financial fragility, and product and portfolio complexity.
To reduce losses, companies can take preventive steps, even though resilience typically requires investment or accepting higher current operating costs. These investments will in most cases pay off in case of disruptions.
There are standard models to organisational resilience and business continuity available. Companies should for example develop a coordinated approach that provides a mandate to ensure its commitment to enhance resilience, adequate resources, an appropriate governance structure, mechanisms to ensure investments, systems that support the effective implementation of activities, arrangements of evaluations, and effective communication.
As a conclusion, Veronica stressed that resilience as a property of the network helps to increase the resilience of its agents. The individual capacity can be promoted as and by a community to make it feasible for SMEs.
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