Third-party risk management (TPRM) is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks associated with third parties, such as vendors, suppliers, and partners. Businesses rely on third parties for a wide range of services, from IT support to manufacturing, but these relationships also come with a unique set of risks.

As businesses increasingly rely on third parties to operate, TPRM has become an essential component of a company’s overall risk management strategy. By identifying and mitigating third-party risks, businesses can protect themselves from financial, operational, compliance, and reputational damage.

Identifying Third-Party Risks

The first step in TPRM is identifying the types of third-party risks that a business may face. Some common types of third-party risks include:

• Financial Risks: These risks include the potential for financial loss due to a third party’s inability to fulfill their obligations or meet contractual agreements.
• Operational Risks: These risks include the potential for disruptions to business operations due to a third party’s actions or inaction.
• Compliance Risks: These risks include the potential for non-compliance with laws, regulations, or industry standards due to a third party’s actions or inaction.
• Reputation Risks: These risks include the potential for damage to a company’s reputation due to a third party’s actions or inaction.

Once the types of third-party risks have been identified, businesses can then assess the risks associated with each third party. This includes identifying critical third parties, conducting due diligence, and implementing ongoing monitoring.

Assessing Third-Party Risks

When assessing third-party risks, businesses should consider the following:

Identifying Critical Third Parties

The first step in assessing third-party risks is identifying critical third parties. These are third parties that have a significant impact on the business and its operations. Examples of critical third parties include suppliers of critical materials, vendors providing key services, and partners in strategic alliances.

Conducting Due Diligence

Once critical third parties have been identified, businesses should conduct due diligence to assess the risks associated with each third party. This includes evaluating the third party’s financial stability, operational capabilities, compliance history, and reputation. This information can be gathered through a variety of sources, such as public financial statements, industry reports, and regulatory filings.

Implementing Ongoing Monitoring

After the due diligence has been completed, businesses should implement ongoing monitoring of third parties to ensure that risks are identified and addressed in a timely manner. This includes monitoring for changes in the third party’s financial stability, operational capabilities, compliance status, and reputation. Additionally, businesses should monitor for any changes in the third party’s business operations or relationships, as these changes may introduce new risks.

Mitigating Third-Party Risks

TPRM should not be viewed as a one-time process but rather an ongoing program that requires regular review and analysis. Businesses should develop policies and procedures to manage third-party risks, including requirements for due diligence performance and ongoing monitoring. These may include:

• Negotiating Contracts and SLAs: By negotiating strong contracts and service level agreements (SLAs), businesses can protect themselves from financial and operational risks associated with third parties. Contracts and SLAs should clearly outline the third party’s obligations, performance expectations, and liability in the event of a breach.
• Implementing Risk Management Policies and Procedures: Businesses can also protect themselves from third-party risks by implementing risk management policies and procedures. These policies and procedures should outline the steps that should be taken to identify, assess, and mitigate third-party risks.
• Establishing Incident Response Plans: In the event that a third-party incident does occur, businesses should have incident response plans in place to quickly and effectively respond to the incident.

Managing Third-Party Risk in the Supply Chain

A significant portion of third-party risks that businesses face comes from their supply chain. Therefore, managing third-party risk in the supply chain is essential for any business.

• Conducting Supplier Risk Assessments: Businesses should conduct regular supplier risk assessments to identify any potential risks associated with their suppliers. These assessments should include evaluating the supplier’s financial stability, operational capabilities, compliance history, and reputation.
• Implementing Supplier Management Processes: Businesses should also implement supplier management processes to ensure that risks are identified and addressed in a timely manner. These processes should include ongoing monitoring of suppliers, regular communication with suppliers, and regular review of supplier performance.

Third-party risk management is essential for businesses that rely on third parties for key services or operations. By identifying and assessing third-party risks and implementing strategies to mitigate those risks, businesses can protect themselves from financial, operational, compliance, and reputational damage. Managing third-party risks in the supply chain and cloud is also crucial for any business. By following the best practices outlined in this article, businesses can ensure that they are properly managing their third-party risks and keeping their operations running smoothly.

B2Press increased its business volume by 104 percent and its turnover by 163 percent by serving more than 450 brands in 2022. Thanks to this, the company’s revenues exceeded 1 million euros.

The spread of mobile devices, smart technologies, and the rise of the internet and social media use has made it unavoidable for companies to invest in online visibility. The influence of content accessed from digital platforms in purchasing decisions led companies to online PR activities.

Proving the success of its ‘pay as you go’ model, Online PR Distribution Service B2Press announced another record year in 2022, achieving a turnover exceeding €1 million with a y-o-y increase of 163% and boosting the volume of business handled by 104%.

Offering PR solutions based on a service model in which no fixed monthly fees and no long-term contract is necessary, B2Press achieved such volumes through its global press release distribution business, which showed a massive 280% y-o-y increase, resulting in almost half of its revenues being generated internationally.

“Winning today’s race while running tomorrow’s”

B2Press Managing Partner Ediz Tokabaş commented, “Our 2022 results exceeded our expectations. Our brand awareness has grown organically without our having to make a significant investment in media buying. Our biggest successes were developing new strategies for efficiently managing our rapidly increasing business flows and effectively commercializing our B2Press brand.

We are trying to win today’s race while running tomorrow’s. In 2023, we want to build on our success by introducing new products, such as a new live content management system. We will continue to expand our agreements with important media groups, especially in Europe. And we want to continue diversifying our revenue streams with value-added products like our new digital content service B2Press Plus.”

Responding to client requests for customized digital content, B2Press Plus was launched to service leading cyber security, enterprise software companies, and other similar providers in the digital ecosystem to support their requirements for producing technical documents like white papers, website content, blog posts, and offering competitor benchmarking and market research including trend analysis.

Press release distribution grew by 62% and special features by 375%

Press release distributions by B2Press in different countries around the world increased by 62% on the previous year, while each press release turned out to have an average of 103 media coverages. The special features and interviews published across different media outlets grew by 375% in 2022.

Collaborating with 55 different news agencies and media databases in 2022, B2Press distributed press releases in 25 languages globally. The main regions where B2Press distributed press releases the most were Dubai/UAE, Europe, United Kingdom and the United States, respectively, with 4th quarter sales evidence of remarkable growth in these new focus markets.

B2Press continues to drive forward into new markets with distribution requests handled from locations as diverse as Spain, Poland, Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia in 2022.

Online PR for dozens of brands from various sectors

Founded in 2016, B2Press is a leading press release distribution and online PR service based in the Netherlands. Public relations, communications, and marketing professionals use B2Press to distribute press releases and multimedia. B2Press has grown to become a trusted source for media outlets, journalists, and marketing professionals at over 450 companies operating in high-growth technology and media sectors such as SAP Turkiye, Zer, Philips, VitrA, RE/MAX, Roksit, CoinW, Express VPN, SPARK, The MENA Stevie Awards, and True Global Ventures.

Contact:
Tulay Genc, info@b2press.com, +31 30 799 6022

In today’s fast-paced world, people expect their queries, enquiries and complaints to be answered fast. In fact, according to Statista, customer service expectations are growing year-on-year, with people now expecting faster turnaround than they did in 2018.

As 94% of people say that customer service experiences can convince them to buy a product again, it’s essential that a company focuses closely on delivering outstanding customer service at all times.

Obviously, meeting customer expectations regarding response times can be a difficult challenge, especially as those expectations increase.

The good news is, despite these challenges it is still possible to meet these expectations.

WHY IS SPEED SO CRUCIAL WHEN IT COMES TO CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customers value customer service very highly. In fact, 96% of customers say good customer service would inspire them to remain loyal to a brand.

Many customers expect answers to their queries immediately or at least within 10 minutes. If you can’t meet these expectations, they will begin to check out your competitors to find those that can.

HOW TO REDUCE RESPONSE TIMES IN YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT

The good news is, there are ways to improve your customer response times without spending loads of money or making enormous changes to your company. Here are some of them.

Check your current response times

You can’t check how fast your customer service responses have become in the future if you don’t know what speed they are now.

To work out your average first response time, simply add up all your first response times for a set period and then divide this number by how many resolved tickets you achieved in this time.

Once you have this figure, you can start to plan your improvements. As you implement these, you can measure their success rate against your original response rate.

Respond to let them know you received their enquiry

An immediate automated email or message to let your customer know their enquiry has been received and is being dealt with can help them to feel reassured. If you can give an estimate as to when this enquiry is likely to be dealt with, this will help even more.

Invest in technology.

Trying to answer every email or social media message manually can be a massive task. Unless you have a huge customer service team who are all incredibly well-trained, you will never manage to answer queries quickly and efficiently.

Try investing in a unified communications system, as this will help you stay organised and increase your speed. It will also enable you to talk to your customers on multiple platforms at any given time.

As all your communications software can be found in one place, there is no time lost searching for the relevant app, platform or channel. This speeds things up considerably too. Use business mobile telephony to assist with communications and responses too.

Devise scripts and templates

Find out what questions your customer service department gets asked the most, then create scripts and templates that will deal with these issues, leaving blank spaces within them so customer details can be filled in either manually or via software automation.

For live support, like telephone helplines, have your teamwork from scripts designed to answer frequently asked questions when relevant.

By using scripts and templates, your team doesn’t have to continuously type up similar responses time and time again.

‘Dr. Schär’, the special nutrition and gluten-free global leader has appointed Hannes Berger as their new CEO, tasking him with accelerating the expansion of the business globally.

 The former CEO, Philipp Schoeller, has resigned from his position as CEO at his own request at the end of 2022. Mr. Schoeller had taken on the role in 2020.

 Philipp Schoeller: “I am grateful to Ulrich Ladurner, President of Dr. Schär, for the trust in me and now the support for my decision. I would especially like to thank my colleagues at Dr. Schär, with whom I worked closely and in a spirit of trust. We can all be proud of the new growth we have created together and the success in strengthening the Schär brand. With great enthusiasm and passion, I have led our global business as the market leader for gluten-free nutrition.”

Ulrich Ladurner, has commented: “I would like to thank Philipp Schoeller for the successful collaboration – his outstanding achievements and his dedicated work. He has kept Dr. Schär going in these difficult times, strengthened our global presence and boosted innovation. I hold Mr. Schoeller in high esteem, regret his departure and wish him all the best and continued success in his future career and life. With the departure of Philipp Schoeller, we want to continue the path we have taken with someone at the top who has known the company well for almost two decades and decisively shaped it in a leading position during this time. We are pleased that Hannes Berger will take over the CEO role at Dr. Schär and we are sure that the company will be in excellent and experienced hands.” 

Hannes Berger has held key positions in the company for almost two decades and is a member if the Board of Directors since its establishment. In the past five years he has been focused on the development of the overseas markets as CEO and President of North America and then expanding his responsibilities also to Latin America, UK and Ireland. Under his leadership, US sales have more than doubled to become one of the Company’s key markets supported by continuous investment in the expansion of the local production sites.

Dr. Schär will be exceeding 500 million euros in revenues this year and wants to further accelerate the business by expanding into new geographies and into new nutritional categories. Hannes Berger has commented on the new role: “I would like to thank Ulrich Ladurner for the trust he has placed in me and look forward to working with the entire team to achieve the ambitious goals we have set ourselves.”