Thriving in the age of accelerated digital transformation

The global spread of COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on our daily lives, shifting the way we work, shop and socialise with each other.

To respond, the focus should be on the continuity of core services and offerings. So organisations of all sizes are having to become digital businesses overnight, with significantly more reliance on digital technologies, digital distribution channels, and digital ways of working.

To recover and thrive in the longer-term organisations will need a deeper understanding of their digital risk exposure, and develop a joined-up approach to digital risk now. This enterprise wide evolution should reimagine the business model and shape the new strategic direction; including everything from frameworks, to teams, to culture, to systems. This must be a frictionless customer-centric control process.

Six priorities to mitigate digital risk:

1. Rapid assessment of organisational digital risk exposure: Where has the rapid shift in operations left you exposed to digital risks, and what can you do to prevent digital issues occurring when you are most vulnerable?
   
2. Manage the risks arising from a newly digitised remote workforce: Do you have sight of your increased external cyber-attack surface, and what can you do to maintain productivity, culture and well-being?
   
3. Enhance controls across digital channels: Customers and businesses will depend on digital channels to interact, but controls for these are often still in ‘start-up’ mode. How best can you scale up controls, whilst allowing enough agility to manage the increased volume of customer enquiries?
4. Replot your strategy to manage digital transformation risks associated with the critical step-change in digital capabilities: Transformation of business processes creates new risks, how do you replot the balance between innovation and control to develop the agile control ecosystem that will enable you to recover quickly?
5. Review governance of the cloud and other digital technologies: Increased dependence on cloud, artificial intelligence will increase reliance and continue to push these topics up the regulatory agenda. What are you doing to stay on top of regulatory exposure and keep ahead of change?
6. Establish a new controls operating model to reflect the new digital world: Current controls operating model will need to be re-designed to deliver digital confidence – from framework, to teams, culture, and systems. What does your new business trajectory look like 3, 6, 12 months down the line?
   

Even under normal circumstances, moving to digital impacts a number of risk areas across the organisation including implications for cyber, regulatory compliance and conduct risk, which require a joined up approach to risk management. Explore more in our Digital Risk framework and the below insights.