It is hard to understand the broad-range impact of COVID-19 on the global economy. Executives must start managing the crisis resulted from the deacceleration of businesses, by reengineering the strategies aimed to the future health of our companies, whilst guaranteeing the workforce’s safety and customers’ loyalty to build up again trust among all stakeholders.
It is essential to focus on the right measures to apply during each stage of a crisis:
Assessment – Inactivity – Recovery
Start assessing the outcomes.
Significant events are changing the way the world used to operate, so, if you are in the first stage towards recovery, start assessing the consequences of the crisis. There is a need to cut operating costs due to the declining of profits and earnings expectancies. Organisations must adapt to maintain low-cash flow, as in the case of those institutions managing loan payments.
Every organisation’s unique characteristics will influence this adaptation; however, there are standard measures to follow; for instance, those businesses counting on a good cash-flow are often weighing it up as a purchase opportunity. Other organisations highly-economical compromised, will collapse.
What should you do?
Consider your company’s current situation; start focusing mainly on prompt-tactical plans, on the need to cut down budget, and the convenience of lowering operation cost. Analyse those employees capable of handling the contingency better, and the ones who request for extended-remote work. Make sure which Cloud salespersons and stakeholders could back you up with the possible-increasing amount of work.
Take notice of SC conflicted-areas, and try to start strengthening solutions where required. It is crucial too to focus on your customers and make them clear that potential delays in shipments could happen; try to find spaces to strengthen their loyalty during the recovery stage.
Find the way out of the latency stage.
It is the stage encompassing the arising of the crisis and the time when contagious cases start getting down. Eventually, we will gradually begin to calm down. On the other hand, gaining trust will take time to repair fully.
The coming out of the pandemic will be when the number of cases flattens. We would see an improvement in the cash flow; however, profits will delay for a while. There are doubts about when the stage of recovery will start; whether it lasts long or not, economic recovery will not be constant.
What should you do?
Executives must establish what to do with what remains of their finances and how to support projects, considering the resultant short-margins.
It is time to explore innovation and look for areas to invest and grow your corporations. Delaying investment might put your brand far-behind competitors, so, settle your business down to start capitalising advancement. Spend part of this time to keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing to discover chances to make a difference.
Exceptional opportunities for transformation might come across at the lethargy stage. For instance, in case the complete workforce is by now working remotely due to COVID-19, it would be likely to maintain parts of the business remote in the course of recovery and into the near future, and to build up innovative alternatives for the digital delivery of products.
Upgrade your operations during recovery
For sure, the beginning of recovery will be unstable. When COVID-19 cases start falling, and people come out from home after quarantine commands, it is signalling the healing will begin. Shopping postponed as a result of the pandemic will return fast, and the customer’s demand will escalate. Companies will witness a new start-up in capital and markets and will urge divisions to invest more in it; however, we are expecting that new investments will be a restrained-financial plan.
What should you do?
Recovery is when unexpected measure ended, and optimism rises; even though budget remains tight, there will be an urgency for investment, as it is the time when the latency stage of investments and productivity advancements payback. Companies focusing carefully on strategic investment and on reducing non-strategic plans will count on width scope of money-making investments.
Of course, it is time to consider trustworthy customers to bring in friends and family to your brand. Recovery is the time to recuperate your digital business investments, halted at some stage of the epidemic, to build up the organisation; it is the correct time to invest in innovation.
Further comments: Functional leaders must be highly-responsive to the critical environment we are living in. Competitors will leave organisations far-behind if they fail to follow now these three stages of a depression. To succeed, they must consider strategical-effective planning to come out right away!
Are you ready to consider a well-defined plan of recovery after the crisis?
Dave Food
Prophetic Technology
M: +44 7775 861863
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