Crisis Management
Coordinate and manage crises across your organization — with executive-level workflows, a live view of status, and a defined response across teams.
Product Overview
Coordinate Executive Response During Critical Events
Crisis Management is the process of coordinating organizational response to high-impact events that threaten operations, reputation, or financial stability. SmartSuite’s Crisis Management software gives organizations a scalable system to manage crises — supporting coordinated, executive-level response and decision-making.
SmartSuite enables organizations to define crisis scenarios, establish response structures, and coordinate activities across leadership teams and departments. With a central system of record, teams can manage crisis events, track decisions, and coordinate actions in a way that is repeatable, auditable, and defensible.
The product supports a wide range of crisis scenarios, including cyber incidents, operational disruptions, regulatory events, and reputational crises, all managed through workflows with one shared view of status.
SmartSuite dashboards show crisis status and response activities as they change, so leadership teams can monitor impact, coordinate actions, and make informed decisions under pressure. This improves response effectiveness and reduces the impact of disruptions.
As part of SmartSuite’s connected GRC architecture, Crisis Management extends beyond isolated response coordination.
Crisis insights are informed by:
- Incident management and operational events
- Operational resilience and continuity planning
- Enterprise and operational risk assessments
- Third-party risk and vendor disruptions
- Issues and remediation activities
Crisis response therefore belongs to resilience and governance rather than standing as a separate exercise.
The product supports a wide range of crisis management use cases, including:
- Executive crisis coordination and communication
- Incident escalation and crisis response activation
- Business disruption and continuity coordination
- Regulatory and reputational crisis management
A Crisis Management program built on SmartSuite is:
- Defensible for regulators and stakeholders
- Coordinated across leadership and operational teams
- Transparent for executive decision-making
What is Crisis Management?
Crisis Management is the process of coordinating executive-level response to high-impact events that threaten operations, reputation, or financial stability. It enables organizations to manage decision-making, communication, and response activities across leadership and operational teams.
Core Capabilities
SmartSuite’s Crisis Management product covers the capabilities needed to coordinate crisis response at scale: workflows, communication, and live dashboards in one platform. Each capability works with other SmartSuite products, so risk, incident, and resilience workflows stay aligned.
Crisis Event Management
Capture and manage crisis events with workflows and one coordination point.
Executive Response Coordination
Coordinate actions across leadership teams with clear roles, responsibilities, and decision tracking.
Crisis Playbooks & Procedures
Define and execute response playbooks for different crisis scenarios.
Escalation & Notification Management
Trigger alerts, escalations, and communications based on severity and predefined rules.
Real-Time Status Tracking
Monitor crisis impact, response activities, and progress on dashboards.
Decision & Action Tracking
Track decisions, actions, and outcomes to ensure accountability and auditability.
Cross-Product Integration
Link crises to incidents, risks, issues, vendors, and resilience workflows.
Workflow Automation
Automate response coordination, approvals, and communication workflows.
Role-Based Access Control
Control who can see crisis data and workflows across teams and leadership.
The Crisis Lifecycle
SmartSuite supports the full crisis lifecycle, from detection through resolution, with linked workflows and dashboards.
Detect & Escalate
Identify incidents that require escalation to crisis-level response.
Activate Crisis Response
Initiate crisis workflows and engage leadership teams.
Coordinate Actions
Manage response activities, communications, and decision-making across teams.
Monitor & Adapt
Track evolving conditions and adjust response strategies as they change.
Resolve & Review
Close crisis events and conduct post-event analysis to improve future response.
Connected Risk Ecosystem
Crisis Management shares data with other SmartSuite GRC products, so crisis response can be reviewed alongside risk, incident, and resilience work.
Capture and resolve incidents with structured workflows, real-time visibility, and integrated response across risk, compliance, and operations.
Centralize enterprise risk management with standardized assessments, dashboards, and linked workflows that align risk, controls, and mitigation across your organization.
Standardize vendor due diligence, centralize assessments, and monitor ongoing risk exposure to ensure supplier reliability and compliance.
Centralize creation, approval, and publication of policies with full lifecycle tracking and attestations, ensuring they remain current, accessible, and auditable.
Who This Product Is For
The Crisis Management product supports stakeholders across leadership, risk, operations, and compliance, giving them one place to coordinate executive-level response to critical events.
Chief Risk Officer
Chief Operating Officer
Crisis Management Lead
Chief Information Security Officer
Compliance Manager
Executive / Board Member
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to the questions readers ask most about this topic.
Crisis management is the process of coordinating response efforts during high-impact events that threaten an organization’s operations, reputation, or stakeholders, such as cyber incidents, operational disruptions, regulatory actions, or public relations crises. Unlike routine incidents, crises require rapid decision-making, cross-functional coordination, and executive oversight. SmartSuite provides one platform to manage crisis events, coordinate response activities, and keep a live view of status, with response workflows that connect data across teams so organizations can act quickly and decisively.
SmartSuite brings stakeholders from IT, security, legal, communications, and executive leadership together in a single platform. Each team accesses relevant information, updates status, and coordinates actions as the situation changes, and workflows define and track responsibilities so everyone knows what they own. One place for communication and coordination keeps teams aligned during critical moments.
Crisis events can be started manually or automatically from related workflows such as incidents, alerts, or regulatory inquiries, and organizations define the criteria for escalating an issue into a crisis. Once initiated, SmartSuite creates a crisis record with associated tasks, teams, and workflows, so the response is organized from the start. Links to the underlying events give decision-makers full context.
Dashboards and shared views display the status of all activities, tasks, and updates related to a crisis. Leadership monitors progress, spots bottlenecks, and makes informed decisions as conditions change, working from the same records instead of fragmented communication channels, which improves situational awareness and speeds decisions.
Organizations define communication workflows, escalation paths, and notification rules for crisis scenarios in SmartSuite, so the right stakeholders are informed at the right time. Escalations can trigger automatically based on severity or progress, which keeps critical issues in front of the right people and messaging consistent.
SmartSuite links crisis management with business continuity and resilience workflows, so preparedness and response stay aligned. Data from BIAs and continuity plans can guide response efforts, which keeps actions taken during a crisis consistent with recovery priorities and keeps these programs out of silos.
Yes. SmartSuite supports organizations with complex operations, multiple teams, and a global presence through scalable workflows, role-based access, and shared visibility. Organizations manage crises across regions while keeping coordination intact, including during large-scale events.
SmartSuite helps organizations respond quickly, coordinate effectively, and keep visibility during crises by running response workflows on one set of data. Dashboards show how a situation evolves so teams can adapt, and post-event reviews let organizations learn from past events and refine response strategies.
Lead with Confidence During Critical Events
SmartSuite delivers a complete GRC suite that links crisis response with risk, incident, and resilience workflows.