Is now the time to consider Business Recovery?
Looking back, many thought the lockdown imposed in March 2020 would last a few weeks and we would quickly be back to our usual way of living. As the weeks passed, lockdowns were lifted, adjusted and re-imposed, certainty seemed a word, amongst others, that had been removed from the 2020 dictionary.
During the crisis we all started to evolve and even reinvent many aspects of our lives. From home schooling and online shopping to virtual socialising and remote healthcare support. We embraced new ways of living and the technologies required to keep connected to our pre-COVID-19 normality. Perhaps the biggest change seen was the way in which businesses had to adapt their operations in order to survive.
As we look ahead, it is becoming more evident that many businesses won’t just naturally bounce back and are likely to continue looking very different to the pre-COVID era for quite some time.
Embracing the uncertainty, we all faced and may well face again, in one way or another, is one of the ways business leaders can encourage the recovery of their business. We have a unique opportunity to learn from this pandemic and from that we can start to intentionally plan for a better future.
With the vaccine roll out and a roadmap for lockdown restrictions being lifted, many are looking at 2021 with more certainty. But, this doesn’t mean that businesses can’t start to enter a phase of recovery, supported by a strong business recovery plan.
The next few weeks and months provide the perfect opportunity to look back at the ways we evolved our everyday living and working during the pandemic, identify key learnings and begin to understand how we can apply learnings and ways in which we have evolved our lives, to benefit our businesses.
During the process of recovery planning business owners will be required to ask and answer some challenging questions. Understanding the full impact endured by businesses will help build a strong plan for recovery.
A good business plan will be built having asked questions such as:
- To what extent has COVID-19 impacted the entirety of your business?
- What has worked well during the pandemic? Can any/all of this continue?
- How has cashflow been affected and what is your cash position for the next 12 months?
- Do you need to understand a new minimum weekly viable sales level to ensure recovery and over time, growth?
- Do you need to introduce new ways in which to measure the performance and recovery of different areas of your business?
- Which areas have been affected the most and therefore provide an opportunity for improvement?
- Are there more tasks that can be done remotely to protect time and boost productivity?
- Can supply chains be reconsidered to provide a more robust and resilient structure in the face of disruptions?
Those business owners who operate with increased openness to deal with the ongoing uncertainty and change, and those that think creatively and adapt their business, will be in a stronger position to succeed in the weeks, months and years to come.
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