THE AUTHOR:
Today, the whole world is facing global problems caused by coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the enormous burden that healthcare is experiencing, the virus has had a strong impact on the global economy. Millions of unemployed, frozen projects and total uncertainty lie ahead – this is how things are today in many industries. Nothing will be as before, however, this is not a reason to give up, you should already now develop a strategy for business restart. Use expert advice and tips to prepare your company.
Three Steps to Overcome the Devastating Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Your Business
The first thing you need to understand is that business reboot in the post-COVID-19 period is a process; everything will not happen in one day, so it is so important to start with an analysis. Examine which aspects of your business have suffered the most, identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Analyze your connections: within the team, with consumers, partners, current and potential stakeholders. This will allow you to get a more complete picture of the real situation of your company and make a number of serious decisions. For example, you can refuse to reboot certain services or products, due to their inexpediency in this period and direct funding to other aspects of your business.
Your next step is to reconsider the strategy of promoting products and services, restart your marketing funnel. You should re-examine the needs of your target audience and identify their new values to ensure that your product meets their expectations. Based on this data, you will be able to overestimate your marketing campaigns and reach your client again, being their reliable partner and assistant. Do not expect that everything will return by itself after COVID-19, go out to meet your customers.
The last, but not least is to pick the right moment for restart. This is not some special date announced by the state, this is the moment when you will be completely ready for the company to work from scratch. Carefully check your ecosystem and infrastructure, make sure that the entire supply chain will work stably. Provide your employees with the safest working conditions, inspire them to new achievements, implement additional incentive programs. Start only when your business recovery plan is ready.
Computools
Software Solutions
Computools is an IT Consulting and Custom Software Development Company that designs solutions to help companies meet the needs of tomorrow. Our clients represent a wide range of industries, including retail, finance, healthcare, consumer service, logistics and more.
Five Crucial Priorities to Consider for Successful Business Restart in Post-COVID-19
There is no universal recipe or guide for restarting a business during the post-COVID-19 period because each plan must correspond to the individual circumstances of each company. However, you can use the five main categories that you need to consider to develop your reboot strategy.
1. Put People in the First Place
Each of the factors described below is significant, however, people are key-value to business. First of all, you should take care of your employees, consumers, partners and any other interested parties. Your main priority after COVID-19 is the safety of people: make sure that your company takes all measures, including additional ones, if necessary, to ensure comfortable and safe work for each employee. Reorganize infrastructure and working places to ensure social distancing, establish a new cleaning schedule, and equip production with extra protection. You can also introduce new remote work protocols, providing your employees with everything they need.
When working with customers, it is important to convey them that the protection and safety of people are in the first place for you: provide the possibility of contactless delivery and payment of your services and goods, notify them of the precautions used in your company to ensure the people’s security, safety and personal protection.
Getting an outside validation of your precautions will be helpful for business restart, as it will demonstrate your deep understanding and appreciation of each person and his contribution to your business.
2. Audit Your Business Processes
You need to make sure that all your business processes are adapted to work in the post-COVID-19 period. Investigating all internal processes – from manufacturing to logistics – will take a lot of time, so you can start now. Your initial task is to find out what changes need to be made to ensure the smooth operation of the company in the current conditions due to the coronavirus pandemic. It may be necessary to transfer equipment, re-arrange warehouses to ensure comfortable working distance, introduce new safety protocols and check the temperature of employees at the entrance.
Once you understand what measures need to be introduced, get to work: transformation and reorganization will require additional efforts, but all this will pay off when you restart your business. Use the recommendations of health organizations to re-arrange staff working conditions and places and make changes to the workflow. To make sure that all measures have been taken and the processes have been adapted, create a checklist, and hold meetings with process experts. This will allow you to understand the degree of readiness for a restart and brainstorm the necessary solutions.
3. Develop a Step-By-Step Strategy for Platforms Restart
As a rule, the company’s platform is a comprehensive IT solution that allows you to manage and monitor many processes simultaneously. “Platforms” can also be understood as the products and services that your company produces.
In the conditions of the global crisis, the launch of the platform must be carried out according to a previously drawn up plan. The optimal solution would be to develop a turn-based strategy, which will consist of several successive phases. If you have a global business, you can build your plan based on geography and launch a platform in one region and move on to the next one. If you have a local business and work with a complex platform, then you should start with one feature and gradually connect the rest. Take one step, see how everything works, make sure that it is fully functional or make the necessary adjustments, and only then proceed to the next step.
This approach is modern and most rational at the moment. Besides, it allows you to accelerate decision-making and scale any amendments.
4. Reshape Business Partnership
A wide partner network, where each participant is located in a different region and is associated with different areas of your activity, is quite vulnerable during this period. If you are located in the USA, your production is in Asia, and Europe is the main market, you should reconsider your partnership strategy. Different regions will operate and scale in their rhythm and schedule, you need to synchronize your efforts to restart the business. Online IT solutions will allow you to keep in touch, quickly solve urgent issues and unite partners from different regions, if necessary.
Now you need to enlist the support of your partners, who are also rebooting their business so that you can mutually support each other along the way. Establishing new relationships will probably be an additional measure to successfully overcome the consequences of a virus pandemic. Use the coronavirus map to identify potential regions for partnership.
5. Prepare the Place
The final point of your business restart plan is a place preparation. Your “place” is a work office, warehouses, manufacturing premises and more. For its preparation, it is necessary to take into account all the above factors. Start with people: returning from remote work to the office should not be fraught with risks. Check if all measures have been taken for safe operating: whether the necessary distance between workplaces is established, whether additional rooms are allocated and whether the personal protection is provided. Carefully check the processes: what protocols are introduced, whether there is a need to measure employee’s temperature before entry, whether additional breaks are introduced for cleaning the premises. Make sure that the operation of the platforms is also reviewed and adapted to new conditions. If your partners will somehow interact with your place, determine in advance a plan for how this will happen. In fact, your place is the heart of the organization, take care of its proper and stable functioning.
A smart plan for rebooting your business will gradually lead the company out of the crisis to success. Use the tips and tricks in this article, and start now to build your strategy. Email Computools’s specialists at info@computools.com or use a form below, if you want to know how the company can help you overcome the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Computools was selected through an RFP process. They were shortlisted and selected from between 5 other suppliers. Computools has worked thoroughly and timely to solve all security issues and launch as agreed. Their expertise is impressive.