Optro launches BCM tool as recovery confidence slips

Optro has launched a business continuity management product as new research highlights a wide gap between executives' confidence in recovery plans and how those plans perform during major disruptions.

The product is designed to help organisations map critical business processes, their owners, suppliers and associated risks in one system. It also links continuity plans to those processes, allowing recovery targets and related measures to update as assessments change, and connects tabletop exercises to continuity plans and their dependencies.

The launch comes as survey data from more than 500 leaders in risk, IT, security, audit, compliance and business continuity points to recurring problems with supplier disruption and newer risks linked to artificial intelligence. Across North America and EMEA, 92% of respondents said they were confident they could meet recovery objectives during a major disruption, but only 39% said they had done so in their most significant incident.

Third-party disruption emerged as a central weakness. Among respondents, 76% said they had experienced a vendor-related disruption in the past two years, while 57% said their most significant vendor-driven disruption led to losses of more than USD $1 million. More than half, 54%, said recovery took longer than their defined recovery window during their most significant disruption.

In the UK sample, the figures were similarly stark. Just over half of respondents, 51%, said they exceeded their recovery time objectives during a major disruption, including 22% who said recovery took more than twice as long as planned. Another 81% said they had experienced a third-party failure or outage in the past 24 months.

AI oversight

The data also suggests governance around AI use in continuity planning remains limited. Only 26% of respondents said they had a formal AI governance programme, despite broad investment in AI tools. In the UK, 23% said they had formal and dedicated AI governance in business continuity management.

That gap matters because organisations increasingly rely on a wider network of suppliers, software services and automated systems to keep essential operations running. When those dependencies fail, recovery plans that appear complete on paper can prove harder to execute in practice.

Optro said the new product is designed to bring together business continuity work with audit, risk and compliance information already held in the same platform. Previously known as AuditBoard, the company said the aim is to give organisations a clearer view of critical operations such as payroll, security operations and customer support during and immediately after a disruption.

The release marks another effort by governance, risk and compliance software providers to move beyond oversight and reporting into operational planning. Business continuity has traditionally relied on separate planning documents, manual updates and periodic exercises, but firms are under pressure to tie those plans more closely to live information on vendors, internal controls and process ownership.

One customer cited by the company said the product could help connect risk management with incident response.

"We believe Optro's BCM solution will allow us to bridge the gap between risk management and operational response," said Kate Marechal, Director, Operational Risk and Risk Services, Shawbrook Bank. "By gaining a single view of our business processes within the same platform we use for audit, risk, and compliance, we should be able to better understand what's critical to our operations, plan for disruptions that could materially impact our business, and test those plans to remediate issues before a disruption happens."

Optro's product leadership presented the launch as a response to the mismatch between perceived readiness and actual recovery performance.

"Most organizations are confident in their continuity plans on paper, but when disruption actually hits, fewer than half deliver on their objectives," said Happy Wang, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Optro. "With our BCM solution, customers will be able to seamlessly integrate their business continuity programs with their audit, risk, and compliance data, providing the GRC intelligence needed to move beyond static reporting to proactive strategy and true operational resilience."

The findings suggest that for many organisations, the challenge is no longer recognising disruption risk but turning that awareness into plans that hold up when suppliers fail, systems go offline or recovery takes longer than expected.