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Crisis management software; what is it? In short, crisis management software helps streamline all crisis management activities, enabling crises to be resolved more effectively and quickly.
The right crisis management software is not just a tool, but an essential member of the crisis team. Crisis management software can be crucial for internal and external communication during a crisis, providing clarity on plans and protocols, alerting or informing the appropriate personnel, structuring and logging information, and implementing and managing actions and decisions.
In this article, we’ll walk you through all the capabilities of such software.
Crisis management software is a general term for tools that can be used to simplify and/or structure the crisis management process.
During a crisis, a crisis team may encounter various challenges. Tools offer a solution to one or more of these problems. In this regard, crisis management software can assist with information management.
The crisis team may have to deal with an enormous amount of information that they must process in a short period of time. The right software can help structure the information and make it transparent.
There are several tools available in the field of crisis management. These tools can offer solutions to one or more of these problems. It is therefore important to carefully consider which obstacles your organization wants or needs support with.
The relationship between crisis management software and these obstacles is explained in this article.
The human brain is an amazing machine. Unfortunately, however, its capacity to process information and multitask is limited. In a crisis situation, a great deal is demanded of people. As a result, sooner or later every crisis team member will reach their own limits.
Crisis management software is designed to make life easier for the crisis team when managing a crisis. By providing structure amid the chaos of crisis management, you become less reliant on your own brain to keep track of everything. Choosing the right crisis management software is therefore crucial.
Crisis management software comes in various forms. The software can offer a solution for a single problem or for a range of problems, also known as all-in-one crisis management software.
The following sections explain how crisis management software can provide solutions for various problems.
Organizations often cite the loss of communication channels as the greatest risk during a crisis. In today’s world, the risk of cyberattacks is ever-present.
A cyberattack often brings an organization’s IT infrastructure to a standstill. This means no access to email, internal phone systems, or other infrastructure—all of which are particularly critical during a crisis. Crisis situations create uncertainty. Staff don’t know what to expect, management becomes anxious, and customers, patients, or other stakeholders are put at risk.
To ensure people remain calm and know what is expected of them, it is important to keep communicating with them. But how do you stay in contact with people inside and outside the organization if you don’t have access to normal communication channels?
Crisis management software can be a solution here. By running the software outside the internal IT infrastructure, you retain access to the contact details of those involved, even if internal communication channels are down. This way, with a single click, you can inform staff, communicate with management or other stakeholders, and chat in a secure environment.
A secure environment is essential for effectively managing a crisis, but also for limiting the damage. By sending situation reports, stakeholders remain informed of developments. Everyone for whom the information is intended is easily notified and has access to exactly the same information.
Most organizations have plans, protocols, and floor plans designed for emergency situations. These documents are often stored internally and, in some cases, are physically available in paper form. But what do you do if you cannot access these documents due to a cyberattack or if access to the building is restricted because of the crisis?
Plans, protocols, and other relevant documents are intended to help a crisis team get started. By maintaining and continuously improving these documents, a crisis team can operate with increasing effectiveness. It is therefore important that these plans and protocols are available to the crisis team during a crisis.
Crisis management software can offer a solution. By centrally storing the plans, protocols, and other relevant documentation on a platform outside the internal IT infrastructure, access is guaranteed. This allows the crisis team to immediately begin managing the crisis based on the correct plans and protocols.
No organization has enough staff on site at all times to handle every crisis situation. But if a crisis does arise, it is, of course, crucial to have the right people in the right place at the right time.
An example of this is the ZiROP situation in hospitals. A ZiROP situation is one involving a large, simultaneous influx of casualties, such as a major accident or a fire. You can imagine that in such a situation, more staff must be called in than are currently present. This is referred to as an alert.
When alerting staff, a number of questions are central. As an organization, do you want to call in staff based on ZIP code, alphabetically, or simply at random? How do you want to monitor whether staff have received the alert and whether they are able to come in? How is the alert sent? Who needs to be alerted, and how many people per discipline?
By implementing crisis management software, all these questions can be answered, and the alerting process can be automated. This is called an alerting scenario. In the alert scenario, individual alerts are combined based on the incident or crisis for which the alert is intended. This speeds up the alerting process and ensures that the crisis coordinator can maintain an overview.
During crisis meetings, a crisis team is under immense pressure. A massive amount of information comes in, actions must be planned, and decisions must be made. All of this must happen quickly, as the crisis continues to unfold.
The danger is that the crisis team loses track of the big picture, overlooks information, or loses sight of pending actions. This can result in unclear and ineffective crisis management, with all the consequences that entails.
The time pressure associated with crisis management is impossible to eliminate. However, it is possible to provide the crisis team with the right tools and resources. Crisis management software can offer the solution.
By selecting the appropriate software based on, for example, the BOB structure for meetings, a crisis team can better maintain an overview. The BOB structure stands for Assessment, Evaluation, and Decision-making. So first of all, what information do we have at our disposal, what should we do with this information, and what actions should we take.
The software can therefore be an important asset in managing information. But even between meetings, crisis management software can be used to monitor the status of certain actions. This reduces the risk that actions are forgotten or that certain information is overlooked.
Crisis management is a field that is constantly evolving and changing. Threats emerge from new directions, and the experience and knowledge gained during previous crises shape our approach to crisis management. Training and awareness are therefore essential components of effective crisis management.
Awareness ensures that threats and risks are less likely to escalate into a crisis. Consider, for example, the rise of phishing emails and how awareness can play a role in this. Frequent training ensures that people are prepared for their role during a crisis and stay up-to-date on developments in the field of crisis management.
The biggest challenge in training is scheduling it. Staff schedules are full, and daily work must be disrupted as little as possible by the training. Crisis management software can be used to schedule, monitor, and deliver short training sessions.
By offering a training session or exercise that staff can then schedule themselves at a time when they are available, the barrier to participation is lowered. In addition, it is possible to monitor which members of the crisis organization have recently been trained and who needs training in the near future.
Crisis management software can help simplify, automate, and streamline certain processes within crisis management. This involves various interconnected aspects of crisis management.
Every organization is different, and the same applies to the modules or features an organization seeks in crisis management software.
It is therefore important that you:
1. identify which functionalities are most suitable for your organization;
2. determine how you want to use the crisis management software within the organization;
3. determine how you want to train staff in the use of the crisis management software.
In addition to ensuring the software meets your needs, it is also important that the company offering the software is secure. Crisis management information is sensitive, and you naturally do not want it to be exposed. Therefore, carefully review the security policy or privacy statement of the potential supplier.
It is advisable to pay attention to the following:
1. information security certifications, such as ISO-27001;
2. the location where your data is stored;
3. the relevant laws and regulations governing data processing.
Merlin Software develops crisis management software and supports numerous organizations across various industries. Read all about our all-in-one crisis management software, CrisisSuite, here .
