Ensuring Digitalization Resilience

Last week, energy industry companies gathered extensively for the Electric Grid Days, offering a two-day overview of the sector’s development and current situation. One of the key themes was resilience.

Resilience is a guiding principle for the operation and development of critical infrastructure, but its lessons should also be considered more broadly in society. Essentially, it refers to the ability to manage crises and disruptions with minimal damage and special arrangements, while ensuring the continuity of vital functions. In the world of electric grids and telecommunications, resilience principles are strongly embedded in operational planning and structures. When examining core operations, such as physical networks and their redundancy, the presence of resilience often goes unnoticed.

It simply works. If it doesn’t, the results can be seen on the evening news.

Digitalization is transforming organizations and has introduced a new dimension of control that is fundamentally different. Even network companies cannot rest on their laurels, and a soft spot for the provision of critical services is quietly forming.

The importance of digitalization resilience grows in tandem with the increase in systems and automation in operations. The increase in quantity correlates with an exponential increase in challenges. At the same time, the force that undermines resilience also grows if it is not managed. If managed well, the direction of this force can be turned around.

Good enterprise architecture and digitalization management are key components of resilience.

There are many details related to this topic, but here are three foundational elements of digitalization resilience.

Transparency in processes and their flow is a crucial part of understanding and managing your own operations. Processes are the organization’s assets, and there should be a shared understanding and transparency regarding them. If there is no transparency in the basic flows of processes, the actors involved, key activities, and the tools used, you may also start to smell smoke around resilience.

Technology, which manifests as applications, cloud services, and the growing number of IoT devices, is another foundational element. These must be understood at a basic level, in terms of key cybersecurity aspects, and particularly in terms of how the business utilizes them. How do these relate to processes, what is done with them in different processes, and thus where they are most critical? Through managing this, you can understand their impacts and identify aspects that are crucial for resilience. Poor management also adds heat to the resilience structure.

People are at the core of everything. Resilience is not built by an organization or department but by people. They are also the most critical pieces in ensuring resilience—both for better and for worse. Everything starts with the fact that people’s significance, roles, and responsibilities are clear. When examining things through the lens of previous processes and technology, people’s presence and responsibilities must also be visible. If you notice that this trio does not meet or you don’t know how they meet, then it’s time for change. Personnel risks are one of the most important themes for resilience. Everything is fine as long as Mikko is at work; otherwise, you’re in trouble.

It all goes sideways precisely on the day Mikko leaves for summer vacation to go fool some trout.

The iPhone is firmly out of coverage area, not to mention the laptop. At this point, the heat and smoke of the resilience framework have found a companion in flames.

Digitalization resilience is a long-term and planned journey, and you buy a ticket for it whether you want to or not. Done in good time or perhaps encouraged by the fire chief and evening news. If the first three elements are in order, congratulations—you are in a rare group. If you feel that something could be done, now is the best time to start.

We offer journeys to digitalization resilience—book a time here to see what kind of adventure awaits. While waiting, explore our services in more detail.