Rochelle Clarke, WG'10 - strengthening resilience of small businesses
Please provide an overview of your current business venture
Continuity Strength has digitized and simplified business continuity planning for small/medium businesses (SMBs). The risk tech solution combines education with preventative action that SMBs use to proactively understand, prevent and mitigate operational risk. It is used by SMBs and advisors who work with SMBs.
- After completion of a questionnaire, SMBs are provided with easy-to-understand contingency plans and customized resilience improvement guidance that help them respond confidently and bounce back quicker from disruptions
- Advisors use the scalable turnkey solution to provide business continuity planning as a service to SMBs. It enables them to have personalized conversations that help their SMB clients mitigate risk.
The uncertainty and disruptive events experienced in recent years have turned risk mitigation into more of a need as sole reliance on traditional safety nets like insurance has often proven unreliable.
Risk prevention is now becoming an integral part of a sound business strategy not only for smaller businesses but also for institutions that support them or rely on their growth, longevity and success.
What has your journey been like?
A number of years ago, one of the businesses in my family experienced a disruptive crisis involving the untimely exit of the owner. With no continuity plan and without the instructions or ability to run the business, employees struggled and operations were temporarily halted.
As a result of this experience, I recognized the need for proactive business continuity planning for smaller businesses since they tend to be disproportionately more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of disruption. I included continuity planning as a service provided by my advisory firm.
Drawing from my corporate experience, we designed a solution that is tailored to the small business’ level of maturity and produces continuity plans in simple, understandable language. Built in features enable small/medium businesses to quickly understand, prevent and mitigate risk to their operations.
After automating the process for internal use with small/medium clients, we productized the approach and launched a scalable, digital consumer facing solution.
Typical of the founders’ journey, it’s been a rich learning experience with its share of ups and downs.
However, the recent shifts to proactive risk management have positively impacted the business and Continuity Strength was a finalist in the Business Continuity Institute's 2021 Americas Awards."
Seeing this come to fruition makes the journey worthwhile.
How can alumni support?
Connections! If resilience and scalable risk mitigation for small/medium businesses resonates with you personally and/or professionally, let’s connect.
Please provide a website/link/video/social media page where additional info can be found on your initiative
www.ContinuityStrength.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rochelleclarke/