Introduction

In the last twenty years, businesses have sought to increase the speed of service delivery to the customer in a bid to gain competitive advantage. For instance, manufacturers have realized that, in an age where products become obsolete more quickly, reducing time-to-market and inventory stock levels, instituting integrated just-in-time production and delivery processes, can make the difference between success and failure. As discussed in Chapter 1, customers have become more uncompromising, wanting and demanding increasing levels of quality service.

Risk management has, traditionally, not oriented itself to this objective. But trends suggest that as managers deal with increasing uncertainty in their marketplace, they will begin to forge links between risk management and improved customer service.

In Chapter 1, we characterized service delivery as the organization's ability to perform business processes on an ongoing basis . The success or failure to maintain operational continuity is dependent on the effectiveness of a wide range of operational and management practices. In this chapter, we examine:

1. Capacity management.

2. Human resource management.

3. Supplier management.

4. Service management.

5. Sourcing management.

6. Project management.

7. Crisis management.

These areas cover the gamut of risks that organizations face in their bid to improve the speed and quality of service delivery to customers, from the high-frequency, low-severity risks inherent in small-scale operational incidents, to the low-frequency, high-severity risks that can cause a crisis and bring them down.

The starting point for managing risk in these areas is an understanding that operational issues have a direct bearing on strategic management. Continuity of operations...