Maintaining Critical Communications When Primary Systems Were Unavailable

The Challenge: Communicating When Primary Systems Could No Longer Be Relied On

A well-established Canadian insurance firm turned to ParaSolution in 2025 to strengthen its ability to maintain critical communications during major disruptions, following a brief interruption in 2024.

The disruption reinforced how critical it was to keep their employees, clients, and suppliers informed quickly during a disruption. It also exposed an important vulnerability: a cyberattack, technology outage, or other operational incident could make corporate email and collaboration platforms unavailable at the exact moment they were needed most. The organization therefore needed an independent communication capability that could remain operational outside its primary IT environment.

Beyond having an alternative channel, it needed to quickly identify who was affected and reach the right people with the right information, based on their department, location, or role.

‍

The Approach: Building an Independent and Decentralized Communication Capability

The organization implemented ParaSolution’s emergency notification capabilities as an alternative communication channel independent from its primary corporate environment, providing communication redundancy when primary systems were unavailable during an incident.

They started by synchronizing employee and organizational information from internal systems identified as sources of truth into ParaSolution, giving response teams access to current contact, location, and organizational data. During an incident, this approach allowed the organization to identify impacted employees and stakeholders without manually consolidating information from multiple sources.

Communication responsibilities were also distributed across 50 trained team leaders. Rather than relying on a single central response team, designated leaders could launch notifications for their own departments and reach the people directly affected by an event.

Through ParaSolution, notifications were set up to be delivered across multiple channels, including text message, email, and telephone, providing an alternative when primary corporate systems were unavailable. The organization also prepared notification templates in advance, allowing response teams to launch consistent communications more quickly during an incident.

‍

The Results: Reaching 90% of Critical Personnel Within 4 Minutes

The approach was directly put to the test when primary communication systems were unavailable.

Within the first four minutes of activation, 90% of critical personnel had already been reached through ParaSolution’s multi-channel emergency notification capability. Assigned team leaders were also able to launch department-level notifications within 10 minutes, supporting a faster and more distributed response.

Because employee and stakeholder information was already synchronized and structured, no manual consolidation was required to determine who needed to be contacted.

The organization also achieved an 80% employee engagement rate during awareness sessions, measured through responses to a survey, demonstrating that employees were not only receiving communications but actively engaging with the process. Together, these results demonstrated that the organization could maintain fast, targeted, and coordinated crisis communications even when its primary systems were unavailable.

Rather than depending on a single communication environment, the insurance firm established a more resilient model in which the right people could be identified, reached, and informed when normal communication channels could no longer be relied upon.

‍

Customer Perspective

When asked what differentiates ParaSolution from other similar products, an end user within the organization proudly responded:

“Highly intuitive, integrated forms and Mass Notification feature”

— Consultant and End User of ParaSolution, Banking and insurance

‍