How the CAA Club Group of Companies uses Resolver to Improve Resiliency

CCG recently began using Resolver to improve resiliency and build a safety network across the organization. To learn more about the positive change that resulted, Resolver spoke with Martin Gierczak*, the CCG Manager of Business Continuity Planning at the time of this case study. Martin is an experienced industry professional and board member of the Disaster Recovery Institute of Canada.

The Challenge 

Martin was tasked with building up CCG’s business continuity strategy from scratch. To start, he developed business impact analyses, which in its final product turned out to be 79 Excel spreadsheets.  This ad hoc system was time-consuming and inefficient.    

Without business continuity software, Martin spent too many of his working hours copying content in Word and pasting it into Excel. He would create in-depth presentations and bring them to executives, who would then have to book meetings with employees. The team then had to take time out of their workday to work with the plan, conduct validation, and confirm that employees could have an effective recovery strategy in the event of a disaster.

It wasn’t a sustainable process for a company that had five incidents that disrupted operations in 2018 alone.

Why Resolver?

CCG needed a tool that could structure and process data effectively and was easily customizable. It needed to be user-friendly and produce actionable information that employees would find relatable and understandable.

Unifying a Team

“Ultimately,” he says, “I need to ensure that my plans are useable and valuable to employees.” 

Buy-in from employees is extremely important to Martin. As with any team, the employees are the most crucial part of the business continuity puzzle. They provide the real-life data and updates to plans and reflect what’s really going on. During a crisis event, they are crucial in the management of recovery and vitally important when everything returns back to business as usual.

Easy Communication Anytime, Anywhere

CCG’s operations have a wide footprint, which stretches across South Central Ontario and into Manitoba. There are two head offices: Thornhill and Winnipeg. Aside from the employees that work that those locations, CCG has hundreds of work at home agents, and 32 stores in Ontario, three more in Manitoba.

Employee buy-in is an important strategy for Martin because he wants to ensure that employees are comfortable managing their day-to-day business operations. Making employees resilient in the face of a crisis not only benefits the company, it reinforces to our Members, that we are here to make good days good and bad days better.

Resolver integrates smoothly into CCG human resource systems. It allows one person to easily launch the continuity plan, which can include an automated notification instructing to impacted staff.

Ready for Anything

Martin also needed his solution to be reliable. “I want confidence knowing I can manage a crisis,” he states. “Getting a call is inevitable, so I want confidence in my ability and the tools I’m using, to know I’m ready for any crisis or situation.”

With Resolver, Martin was able to put himself and his superiors at ease, while also enhancing collaboration with his team. 

The Results

Since CCG went live with Resolver, Martin has found it much easier to translate raw data into relevant reports and dashboards.   

“The content management piece makes my life a lot easier. The customization of the features within the Global AlertLink platform is something that I have come to depend on. In addition, the data generated will enable our organization to build projects that strengthen our overall resiliency to handle crisis events, but also be there for our members,” says Martin.  

Improving Roadside Assistance

Already, Resolver has had helped CCG roadside assistance team to navigate some crisis moments. Every so often, when the weather gets bad and call volumes get heavy, a manager on duty at CCG has to contact anywhere from 70-140 team members and offer them overtime in exchange for assisting to reduce service times.   

Before Resolver, “code red” heavy call volume periods meant that a manager, multiple ones on occasion, spent up to an hour on the phones or manually inputting phone numbers, to text team members. They were leveraging lists that were not tied to the HR data file with most up to date contact info. So, Martin set up a program in Resolver and deployed training that would help managers send notifications automatically.

Now, the overtime request process takes about 15 seconds to execute, responses from agents can be tracked and managed accordingly. As responses can be monitored in real time, this provides business leadership the visibility to support the workforce and forecasting team.

Crucial Information, Clearly Presented

Martin is also making good use of Resolver’s program management dashboards to inform his team about due dates and processes that need a second look.   

In one instance, he wanted to emphasize the impact that loss of staff could have on the organization. Resolver gave him the data aggregating and representation tools that he needed to show a three-month timeline for recruiting and an additional three months for the ramp up.

“That’s six months of someone not fulfilling a role,” says Martin. “That’s an impact to the line of business.” With Resolver, he’s able to collect that information and present it clearly to executives so that decisions can be made to secure funding for interactivity and overlap to improve continuity for that business line.

What’s Next? 

“It’s taken less than a month for CCG to get this level of benefit from Resolver because it’s a one-stop-shop  that I can add call tree exercises and map out all the relationships with impactful visuals.”

Resolver has enabled Martin to create call tree strategies, support adaptive BCP projects and customized crisis responses. The solution’s user-friendly design means that he’s been able to communicate it to every member of his team.  And he’ll be able to keep doing this as the needs of the company change.

Thanks to Resolver, Martin knows that he can respond quickly to any issue and that all of his people, including many remote workers, will be able to communicate with each other and keep things moving along smoothly.   

* While Martin has since moved on from CCG, he loved working with Resolver and his comments stand based on his time at CCG.

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