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This session will present proven practices for managing vendor disruptions. Applying “the best defense is a good offense” approach (the strategic offensive principle of conflict), rings true for planning and mitigating the risk of supply chain disruptions. The presenter will explore general planning practices to manage vendor risk and continuity of operations in the procurement process. Attendees will leave this session with an understanding of a due-diligence approach to engaging and including essential vendors in exercises to identify gaps and surgical actions needed to respond quickly to minimize the impact when a vendor cannot deliver its product and service to your organization which your organization relies upon.

As business continuity professionals, we may be asked to be part of the vendor selection or management process. “Where do I start?” and “What should I be looking for?” are just the start of many questions to come. During this interactive workshop, you will learn to look at vendor management through a continuity lens — from contract language to contract expectations. We will offer suggestions for what to include – and not include – in your contracts and discuss how to review vendor contracts to help ensure that your organization is getting the RTO, RPO, and service levels specified. We will dissect a force majeure clause and discuss the ramifications it could have on your contract. The goals of the workshop are to provide sample language that could be used in your company’s service agreement boilerplate; provide examples of language that should NOT be in a service agreement; and provide tips on how to help your procurement team with reviews from a continuity viewpoint. Bring your questions or examples of difficult language that you have had to live with. NOTE: For this workshop, a vendor is supplying goods or services that your company is consuming while doing business. This is not a workshop on supply chain management.

Imagine walking into your boss’ office announcing that you just helped your organization save up to 20% of its annual insurance spend for the next 5-10 years. In this “hard market”, executives are struggling to find the balance between investing in business continuity programs and investing in insurance. However, this creates an opportunity to find new ways to add value to your organization and demonstrate a return on investment. During this session, we will discuss how the insurance industry looks at business interruption insurance, how business continuity and disaster recovery programs can improve the outcomes of your insurance negotiations, and how to more effectively work with risk managers. We will explore how re-framing the roles that insurance and business continuity play can help you improve the efficiency of your insurance programs, “right size” your insurance and resilience programs, and leverage your claims data to be more effective.

Understanding third party vendor risk is essential for organizational resiliency. This session will address best practices for assessing vendor risk and resiliency. We will review how to evaluate residual risks and potential impacts to incorporate vendor risk into a comprehensive resiliency program. We will also review using data analytics to better quantify and rate residual risk.

Our increasing reliance on 3rd party vendors has launched vendor risk as a top concern among leaders and resiliency professionals. When organizations invite a vendor in, they are placed in potential jeopardy from that vendor’s disruption, failure and bad behaviors. Proper onboarding is essential to mitigate this exposure. This session looks at a three tiered approach to completing a vendor assessment : vendor management; vendor resiliency and vendor oversight. The end result is a vetting process where inherent risks are uncovered; mitigation strategies are developed and residual risks are exposed and understood.