Time to reimagine and re-engineer your business
NEVER WASTE a crisis. It’s a saying that has gained popularity in some quarters since the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the world and one that every business should consider.
One of the most important questions business leaders should ask themselves today is: Is your business exploiting or squandering the opportunity to renew itself, develop a more resilient and profitable business model, and create greater value to new and existing customer segments?
Much of the discussion around the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few weeks has been focused on what has been lost, and understandably so, as these have been trying times for many businesses.
However, at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, business owners, managers, supervisors, and everyone in leadership, or even those who aspire to lead, must shift focus to strategically plan for and even create upsides in these times. Lamenting losses and pandering for a return to life exactly as it was before COVID-19 is neither helpful nor practical for some enterprises if they hope to move beyond survival to a post-coronavirus growth trajectory.
This pandemic can be a panacea for companies with great vision that embrace the new normal of doing business. That shift begins and ends with strong leadership.
The starting point for reimagining and reinventing a small business is to undertake a comprehensive strategic-planning exercise right away.
Typically, companies would undertake strategic planning prior to the start of a new financial year or near the end of the year. Proactive businesses need to have those planning sessions now rather than later.
A COVID-19 strategic-planning session would include a review of the external environment; the trends; the major economic indicators; and the opportunities and risks that are present locally, regionally, and globally.
STRATEGY MAP
It may also be helpful to organise the brainstorming around particular themes, for example: process re-engineering, automation, and artificial intelligence or AI; product development; customer experience; e-commerce; digital transformation; and finance, risk management, and business resilience.
Once the themes have been established, the next step is to build out key issues related to each theme.
For process re-engineering, automation, and artificial intelligence, some issues to consider would be:
Should we undertake a comprehensive review of all business and company processes and procedures?
What would be the goals of this exercise?
Are there opportunities to increase efficiency?
Can we make or processes even more customer friendly? How can we improve productivity?
How will we measure and monitor?
To whom do we assign these tasks?
For new product development some issues to consider are:
How relevant are our products and services in a post-COVID-19 world?
What is the most profitable product or service mix?
How has demand changed or continue to change?
Do we need new products and services?
Should we cull some products or services?
For customer experience, some issues to consider are:
How have our customers circumstances changed?
What are their new realities and needs?
How do we pivot our business to put them and their new realities firmly at the centre of our value propositions?
How will we engage with the new more digital normal to which they have grown accustomed?
How can we make their lives easier?
What apps can support deeper customer relationships and extended customer lifetime value?
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
E-commerce is, perhaps, one of the key considerations in the new normal as globally, more consumers are either choosing or have been forced to do business online. Some of the issues to consider are access, data security, risk of fraud, ease of doing business, new customer channels for service and delivery, among others.
Prior to COVID-19, digital transformation was just being introduced in some companies and organisations. However, since the crisis, we have seen not just businesses, but governments accelerate the pace of digital transformation, sensitisation, and execution. Some critical planning issues would be goal-setting around digital transformation, policy development, training and retooling, remote work, digital processes and digitisation of records and documents, creating a framework and implementation schedule, budgeting and resources to support digital transformation, among many others.
Finally, now is the time to review risk management and business resilience measures and procedures as well as financial management in the short and medium term. The most pressing issues have to do with managing cash and risk mitigation. Among the key considerations are recasting budgets within the context of the new strategic and planning priorities and realities, access to capital and debt servicing, cashflow management, COVID-19resilient receivables, payables, and credit policies and procedures, among many others.
Just as the Spanish Flu changed the world after 1918, COVID-19 has changed the world as we knew it, and many of these changes may be with us forever. W, therefore, have a unique and perhaps once-ina-lifetime opportunity to reimagine and reinvent our businesses to be the earliest adapters to these changes and even shape the new normal in our markets.
Now is the time to shift to new business models and new ways of doing business that may enable them to be more resilient, more equitable to all stakeholders, and better able to manage future shocks and flourish as other businesses did a hundred years ago. We can all start today with vision and then positive strategic planning and execution.
One love!
■ Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA, a certified trainer in entrepreneurship, and creator and executive producer of The Innovators and Let’s Make Peace TV series. yaneek.page@ gmail.com