Supply Chain Risk Services
Zurich Resilience Solutions
The importance of supply chain risk management
While COVID-19 highlighted supply chain vulnerabilities, it doesn’t take a global crisis to disrupt critical supply chain functions. Extreme weather, cyber and geopolitical threats, reputational and quality issues, and logistics/ transportation disruptions are just some of the forces that can create significant supply chain issues.
In an increasingly global economy, even the most local of businesses are dependent on goods or parts from other regions. A supply chain disruption can not only harm a company in the moment it occurs, but also have long-lasting impacts including customer dissatisfaction, reputational damage and loss of market share.
Supply chain interruptions are more frequent and costly than ever before, and their significant magnitude can attract attention on a global scale. Given these risks, businesses need to be prepared with lean but resilient supply chain management.
Help protect your supply chain with Zurich Resilience Solutions' risk management services
Supply chain specialists from Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) can help you make your supply chain more resilient, at your own pace. We start with a risk assessment to identify potential risks, then create a tailored plan to help your company tackle supply chain threats and protect its operations, financial position, and reputation.
Customized ZRS supply chain services include:
An enterprise-wide risk assessment of your end-to-end supply chain management process including the maturity of supply chain resiliency and major exposures. Includes:
- Supply chain vulnerabilities
- Organization supply chain management maturity and focus areas
- Quantified and benchmarked major risk exposures
- High-level mitigation opportunities
- Roadmap to optimum supply chain resiliency
Engagement with a ZRS Supply Chain specialist to build resilience by executing roadmap actions, potentially including:
- Determining critical supplies and suppliers
- Providing supplier profit and loss mapping
- Calculating financial loss scenarios
- Reviewing current mitigation practices
- Recommending alternatives and/or improvements in mitigation actions
- Engaging in real-time monitoring for critical suppliers
ZRS can provide customers with monitoring capabilities that include 24/7 notification alerts if there is potential for their supply chain to be compromised.
Customers receive insights such as where supply chain risk exposures may also create compliance or sustainability issues.
Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience in Construction Webinar
Watch this webinar to learn about construction-specific supply chain risks and strategies that can help construction businesses manage supply chain risks to meet project timelines and avoid project delay penalties and cost increases.
Case studies: See how ZRS can help your business succeed
More companies are facing turbulent conditions like raw material shortages, natural catastrophes, cyberattacks and geopolitical threats. That’s why business continuity is mission-critical to helping companies mitigate revenue losses, avert reputational damage and meet customer expectations. The case studies below explore how our business resilience specialists helped companies build resilience and minimize the impact of a crisis or disruption.
Crisis management and response
Even the best prepared companies can be affected by a supply chain disruption —and the response is key to a successful recovery. Along with risk prevention and mitigation, ZRS supply chain specialists can help you build resilience after an event, including supplementing your company’s wider crisis management and response plans.
Preparing for the unexpected with business continuity planning
Whether it’s a temporary disruption or a true crisis, businesses need to consider how to move forward when their supply chain is adversely affected. Through risk evaluation, mapping and grading, ZRS can turn risk scores into supplier recommendations and actionable insights for targeted mitigation strategies, including risk-transfer options.
Of course, supply chain issues aren’t the only threat to business continuity. Click here to learn how ZRS Business Continuity Services can help you navigate other disruptions, including natural disasters, equipment failure and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
While property risks are finite and based on the value of an organization’s tangible assets, supply chain risks can accrue at more than one site simultaneously and result from a myriad of threats. These threats can include those that are not covered by insurance and can result in long-term lost market share and reputational damage.
With the complexity and global interdependence of today’s supply chains, there are many potential points of failure and they’re not always readily apparent. COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and other events have shown the significant impact supply chain disruptions can have. That said, businesses can take action to prepare for potential disruptions to the delivery of products to customers, by analyzing the vendors, raw materials, and distribution channels needed to manufacture those products. Supply chain risk management is an essential part of business sustainability.
In addition to risks mentioned above (natural disasters, wars, geopolitical disputes, facility fires, quality issues, transportation and logistical disruptions, cyber breaches, pandemics), a supply chain can be affected by social unrest and protests, workforce shortages and stoppages, equipment failure, regulatory shutdowns, vendor reliability, and much more. New risks evolve as technology advances and with different conditions in different geographical areas.
Risk specialists, like the ZRS Risk Engineers, bring industry- and risk-specific knowledge to their consultations with customers, with tools, resources and training to help customers prioritize mitigation opportunities to help limit exposures and their impacts.
Marine Insurance
In addition to working with our Supply Chain specialists, businesses should ensure they have appropriate Marine Insurance, coverage related to shipping goods and materials around the world. In our dynamic global economy, a variety of logistical risks can impact interconnected operations and lead to the loss or damage of the goods being transported. Marine Insurance can help businesses mitigate these potential losses.
