“Digital solutions lead the way in crisis communications” reports BCI

This year, mobile phones and computers remain the dominant devices for managing emergencies, while e-mail or enterprise messengers such as Teams, Slack or Skype are the preferred methods used to activate crisis management teams. This indicates an ongoing move towards fast digital solutions suited to immediate global communication, which has been a growing trend since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Software-as-a-Service remains popular

Research shows that the majority of respondents use emergency notification or crisis management tools (60.3%) despite 2024’s financial challenges, indicating that organisations rely significantly on these solutions as the basis of crisis preparedness and response strategies.

Software-as-a-Service remains the preferred option for emergency and crisis communications software and data shows that organisations employing such dedicated tools obtain activation times that consistently outperform those relying on manual methods.

This year’s findings also highlight a shift towards enhanced preparedness, with organisations increasingly prioritising training and exercise programmes. In 2024, 75% of organisations carried out training programmes at least once and over 80% exercised their plans just as frequently.

Such a proactive approach is deemed to be crucial for ensuring teams are equipped to handle crises effectively, duly reflecting a heightened awareness of the importance of crisis communications.

Human factors pose challenges

Human factors continue to pose substantial challenges for practitioners. Lack of response from staff is still the leading reason for plan failure. Other issues, such as outdated contact information and poor internal co-ordination, remain major obstacles.

These human-driven problems are the primary causes of emergency communication failures, even though many organisations have increased their training and exercising programmes.

Other report highlights include the identification of severe weather events as the primary trigger of emergency communications plans, closely followed by cyber security incidents/data breaches and IT or telecoms incidents. Most organisations are able to activate their crisis plans within 60 minutes.

Finally, many organisations expressed some dissatisfaction with their current communication tools, highlighting issues such as insufficient functionality, poor integration and financial constraints. This feeling indicates that, despite some forward steps, there are still improvements to be made in the industry.

Significant challenge 

Maria Garcia, head of thought leadership at the BCI, said: “In recent years, there has been a clear shift toward digital crisis response, enhancing both the speed at which organisations can activate their crisis plans and the effectiveness of their response. However, the human factor remains a significant challenge, in turn highlighting the need for thorough preparation.”

Garcia added: “As organisations refine their crisis communication strategies, they must concentrate on strengthening human engagement, focusing on training and exercising to ensure a truly effective emergency response.”

Dr. Stefanie Hauer, senior vice-president for commercial at F24, explained: “As a long-standing sponsor of this report, we are proud to support the latest insights into the evolution of emergency and crisis communication. Once again, the report clearly demonstrates that digital solutions play a key role for preparedness. This is why F24 is committed to enabling informed decisions about action and preparedness.”

*Download the BCI Emergency and Crisis Communications Report 2025