Independent Consulting Study Finds Unified Approach to Critical Event Management Improves Operational Resilience

78 Percent of Organizations Reduced the Impact that Critical Events Had on Safety Due to Unified Management Approach

BURLINGTON, Mass.--()--Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management and enterprise safety software applications to help keep people safe and businesses running, today announced the findings of an October 2018 study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Everbridge. The study’s findings reveal that by taking a unified approach to managing critical events (e.g., extreme weather, violence, IT failure, supply chain disruption), businesses can significantly reduce the impact on employee safety, organizational reputation, and revenue.

According to the study, Take a Unified Approach to Critical Event Management, companies are investing significant resources in sophisticated controls to protect their employees, brand and assets from critical events. These disruptive incidents (ranging from cyberattacks to terrorist activity) increasingly lead to business impacts such as operational losses, brand damage, and concerns for employee health and safety.

Despite the investments being made, companies struggle to optimize their critical event management (CEM) operations, slowing down response time and creating potentially life-threatening confusion. As a result, organizations are turning toward continuous resolution and a unified approach to CEM that links security and business operations, which in turn gives security, operations and risk professionals more time to react or even avoid the negative consequences of these events.

Key findings of the Forrester Consulting study include:

  • Critical events are not only common, they’re next to inevitable. The most common events impacting surveyed enterprises were:
    • 33 percent experienced impacts from a natural disaster or extreme weather
    • 28 percent experienced theft of physical or intellectual property
    • 25 percent experienced an IT failure of a business-critical system
  • The areas most impacted by critical events included customer safety (59 percent), employee safety (59 percent), brand and reputation (56 percent) and revenue (53 percent). A unified, efficient, distributed, automated and collaborative process for managing critical events lessens these impacts.
  • Organizations with a unified approach are better prepared to handle critical events through optimized tools and procedures; these include integrated alarm notifications, documented roles and responsibilities, and social media monitoring.
  • The CEM metrics companies track reveal a maturity disconnect, with less than 50 percent of companies tracking the cost to repair, replace, or improve processes, post-event.
  • Companies with a unified approach to CEM will see a return on their investment in the form of reduced mean time to identify, know and resolve events. In addition, the top five areas most affected by critical events experience the greatest positive impact and improved outcomes from a unified approach. Of surveyed respondents, 78 percent indicated that a unified approach to CEM had a positive impact on customer safety, 75 percent on brand and reputation, 74 percent on employee safety, and 72 percent indicated a positive overall impact on revenue.

“When it comes to managing today’s critical events, an approach that unifies and connects siloed business units in a continuous event resolution process maximizes a company’s ability to respond,” said Bill Betcher, Vice President of Product Marketing, Everbridge. “Unfortunately, many companies struggle to achieve a unified approach. Instead, businesses often find themselves faced with the challenge of responding quickly and decisively, with fewer resources to do so. Without an end-to-end process for dealing with critical events, it’s nearly impossible to satisfy this mandate.”

The study concludes: “A unified approach to CEM … meets the demands for rapid response and speedy incident remediation. Companies without this approach are far behind, missing out on significant operational benefits. However, companies with a unified approach cannot become complacent and fail to further optimize their tool set and metrics. Good intentions and the adoption of a unified approach are not enough — companies must seek out best practices in tools and metrics to continuously improve their CEM.”

To learn more about how Everbridge can help improve your company’s approach to managing critical events, please contact us at support@everbridge.com.

For more details on the study, please visit: https://www.everbridge.com/customers/success-center/resource/forrester-opportunity-snapshot-take-a-unified-approach-to-critical-event-management/.

Study Methodology
To create this independent study, Forrester leveraged existing research on security and risk. Forrester Consulting supplemented with custom survey questions for CEM decision makers at enterprises based in the US with global operations. All enterprises surveyed had revenues greater than $500M, with 60 percent of the decision makers surveyed at businesses with revenues greater than $1B. Questions were related to critical event fusion center approaches to CEM. The custom survey began in July 2018 and was completed in October 2018.

About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to keep people safe and businesses running. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 4,200 global customers rely on the company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication devices, and track progress on executing response plans. The company’s platform sent over 2 billion messages in 2017 and offers the ability to reach over 500 million people in more than 200 countries and territories, including the entire mobile populations on a country-wide scale in Sweden, the Netherlands, the Bahamas, Singapore, Greece, Cambodia, and a number of the largest states in India. The company’s critical communications and enterprise safety applications include Mass Notification, Incident Management, Safety Connection™, IT Alerting, Visual Command Center®, Crisis Commander®, Community Engagement™ and Secure Messaging. Everbridge serves 9 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, all 25 of the 25 busiest North American airports, six of the 10 largest global consulting firms, six of the 10 largest global auto makers, all four of the largest global accounting firms, four of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers and four of the 10 largest U.S.-based health insurers. Recognized as a Deloitte Technology Fast 500TM company, Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with additional offices in Lansing, San Francisco, Beijing, Bangalore, Kolkata, London, Munich, Oslo, Stockholm and Tilburg. For more information, visit www.everbridge.com, read the company blog, and follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated opportunity and trends for growth in our critical communications and enterprise safety applications and our overall business, our market opportunity, our expectations regarding sales of our products, and our goal to maintain market leadership and extend the markets in which we compete for customers. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and were based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “believe,” “target,” “project,” “goals,” “estimate,” “potential,” “predict,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “intend,” variations of these terms or the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. Our actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to: the ability of our products and services to perform as intended and meet our customers’ expectations; our ability to attract new customers and retain and increase sales to existing customers; our ability to increase sales of our Mass Notification application and/or ability to increase sales of our other applications; developments in the market for targeted and contextually relevant critical communications or the associated regulatory environment; our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate; we have not been profitable on a consistent basis historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; the lengthy and unpredictable sales cycles for new customers; nature of our business exposes us to inherent liability risks; our ability to attract, integrate and retain qualified personnel; our ability to successfully integrate businesses and assets that we may acquire; our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and technology partners; our ability to manage our growth effectively; our ability to respond to competitive pressures; potential liability related to privacy and security of personally identifiable information; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights, and the other risks detailed in our risk factors discussed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including but not limited to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the SEC on March 12, 2018. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We undertake no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

All Everbridge products are trademarks of Everbridge, Inc. in the USA and other countries. All other product or company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Jeff Young
Everbridge
jeff.young@everbridge.com
781-859-4116

Contacts

Jeff Young
Everbridge
jeff.young@everbridge.com
781-859-4116