Business resilience has emerged as a strategic lever for ensuring business continuity and competitiveness. Faced with the proliferation of crises, whether health-related, geopolitical, or linked to supply chain disruptions, companies must rethink their practices to secure their operations.
What is the meaning of organisational resilience?
Business resilience can be defined as a company's ability to absorb disruptions, maintain essential functions during a crisis, and recover quickly—or even emerge stronger. It's not just about 'surviving' but about proactively adapting whilst ensuring business continuity.
More specifically, business resilience rests on several pillars:
- Anticipating probable and unpredictable risks;
- The ability to adapt processes, resources, and behaviours;
- The capacity to learn from failures to become stronger.
Why strengthen business resilience?
Faced with increasingly frequent systemic disruptions, strengthening business resilience is no longer optional. It's a necessity to ensure:
- Business continuity, including in crisis contexts;
- Better responsiveness to market developments;
- Stakeholder confidence (customers, employees, partners).
A resilient infrastructure doesn't simply react to crises; it prevents them, withstands them, and recovers from them. In other words, it transforms uncertainty into a strategic lever. As experts from McKinsey & Company management consultancy highlight: "Resilience is not just about the ability to recover quickly. In business, resilience is about facing adversity and shocks and continuously adapting to grow. Truly resilient organisations don’t just bounce back better; in fact, they thrive in hostile environments."
What are the 4 types of business resilience?
Business resilience takes several complementary forms:
- Human resilience: Employees' capacity to adapt, learn, and bounce back from difficulties. It relies on training, workplace well-being, and company culture;
- Operational resilience: The company's ability to maintain critical processes during disruption. This includes crisis management, business continuity, and operational flexibility;
- Strategic resilience: Capacity to adjust the company's strategy according to market developments and emerging risks. It implies active monitoring and agile governance;
- Financial resilience: Strength of financial resources enabling shock absorption, innovation investment, and growth support despite uncertainty.
Each of these forms of resilience contributes to the organisation's overall robustness and must be integrated into procurement and supply chain management.
The pillars of business resilience
Strengthening business resilience requires a holistic approach. Several foundations must be integrated into a managerial strategy to make it a structural reflex.
Adaptive and proactive culture
The first step consists of anchoring an organisational culture founded on proactivity, empowerment, and learning. This involves:
- Accepting uncertainty;
- Valuing experimentation;
- Implementing feedback loops.
Engaged and visionary leadership
Resilient management plays a decisive role. Business leaders must be capable of inspiring, communicating clearly, and quickly mobilising teams around new priorities. Transparency, trust, and informed decision-making are at the heart of this dynamic.
Process digitalisation
Digital tools (ERP, risk management software, collaborative platforms...) enable incident anticipation, scenario simulation, and orchestration of rapid responses. Digitalisation isn't just an efficiency lever: it's a resilience factor.
Integrated risk management
Lastly, a structured risk management system enables identification, evaluation, and prioritisation of potential vulnerabilities. This involves:
- Mapping threats;
- Analysing impacts;
- Preparing mitigation actions.
Concrete strategies for strengthening your business resilience
Once general principles are defined, it's appropriate to adopt a structured and operational methodology to ensure continuity.
Developing a business continuity plan (BCP)
The BCP is a key document that anticipates crisis scenarios, formalises possible responses, and assigns roles. It must be regularly:
- Revised;
- Tested via simulations;
- Integrated into management processes.
Developing key competencies
Investing in continuous training, versatility, and skills development enables employees to demonstrate responsiveness and adaptation, including during organisational upheaval.
Procurement optimisation
Rationalising the supplier panel, developing strategic partnerships, and innovating in procurement practices (e.g., group purchasing, resource sharing) strengthen supply security and the capacity to face unforeseen circumstances.
Effective internal communication
Fluid, top-down and bottom-up communication is essential for all teams to remain aligned. The use of collaborative tools (e.g., Teams, Slack, intranet) and emergency communication plans must be anticipated.
CSR and resilience: a strategic duo
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an indirect but essential lever for resilience. It encourages sustainable, inclusive, and responsible choices.
Examples of synergies:
- Local sourcing to limit logistical risks;
- Sustainable relationships with committed suppliers;
- ESG indicators integrated into management dashboards.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and digitalisation play a key role in business resilience. Sustainable procurement, sustainable supplier relationships, and the use of technology to manage the supply chain strengthen the company's capacity to face crises and ensure business continuity.
Case study: Supply chain security in an industrial company
Let's take the example of a European industrial company dependent on 70% foreign suppliers. During the health crisis, it had to face:
- Delivery disruptions;
- Extended production delays;
- Cost increases.
The solutions implemented were:
- 30% reduction in the supplier panel with the refocusing on the most reliable partners;
- Geographical diversification (addition of European suppliers);
- Implementation of a procurement BCP;
- Centralisation of long tail spend with a single supplier, such as Manutan, to reduce the number of contacts, simplify management, consolidate purchases, and secure supplies;
- Integration of digital e-procurement solutions offered by Manutan to streamline processes, limit maverick spend, and control expenditure;
- Methodological support from Manutan (Savin'side®), enabling supplier panel optimisation, improved visibility and long tail spend performance;
- Logistical security through Manutan's expertise and network, guaranteeing supply continuity even during crisis periods.
Results:
- 25% reduction in replenishment time;
- 12% savings on logistical costs;
- Improved customer satisfaction rate.
Thanks to Manutan's integration into the procurement and supply chain rationalisation policy, the company takes an important step towards better business resilience: it gains responsiveness, controls costs, and limits risks through an expert partner capable of providing comprehensive and agile solutions for its non-strategic purchases.
Business resilience is now necessary for any company wishing to ensure its sustainability and competitiveness in an uncertain environment. By mobilising the right levers and optimising procurement management, you prepare your organisation to face crises and seize new opportunities.
