Building Business Resilience During the CoronaVirus Shut Down
Olusola Amusan
Co-Founder at Vesti (Techstars ‘22 - Simplifying immigration & building financial futures for humanity) Co-founder Curators Interactive
As the landscape of business changes in this new world of global shut downs and disease outbreaks, here are a few things you can do to maintain business resilience and cash flow.
1. Stay in touch and in the Face of your Customers
At this time, you must have received several notes from CEOs of huge companies, warning people about the Covid 19 Outbreak, they are ensuring that their constituency (otherwise known as customers) are well protected.
Use all the platforms available to show that you are close to and that you care about your customers. Email, them but also add a face to it. Connecting with customers and letting them know how prepared you are to remain serving them is very vital in this period.
2. Digitize your Processes
As social distancing increases, you need to take advantage of tools that can help you turn every (or most) of your physical operation into digital. Use ePresentation tools like Zoom, WebEx and GotoMeeting to stay ahead of the curve rather than postponing vital customer presentations. I know you know these, tools, the question is do you use them.
3. Empower your team and Employees
Train your team on productivity tools like Office 365 in this period, get them to use Teams and Slack to connect with one another, finish task and stay connected even while working apart. The best time to use screen sharing tools on Zoom and still get result is now. Provide them extra internet access allowance and upgrade their devices if you can. Empowering your team is more important than an office upgrade over the next few months. You should have a consultant support you through this transformation, if you do not have an internal champ or the needed capacity.
4. Launch new products and services
To show that your company is resilient, this is the time to actually show resilience by launching new products. Convert your dine-in service as a restaurant into a order-in (take out ) service. Convert your in-class events into webinars, and launch a new app, or eLearning platform. This is the way to go. This will be needed not only during this corona virus outbreak, but as the world arround us evolves. If you are very adventurous, augmented reality is not too far away.
5. Insist on getting paid before service
To ensure you have cash flow, your account receivable team (if you have one) must be strict on getting paid. Customers want leverage, they want to hold on to the money for as long as they can. Insist and be strict on getting people to pay some significant deposit for any work that is to be done in this season. Cash flow is crucial to your company's survival at this time.
Want to Learn More about launching new products and sustaining cash flow despite the shut down? Join my Multiple Streams program
Need some personal coaching on Resilience and applying technology to your business, email me [email protected]
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4 年This a well articulated article. It further emphasis on the depth of your cerebral acumen. The Pandemic has not only brought the full scale implementation of Digitalization forward by say 20 years, It has also installed the mindset and culture it needs to thrive. I celebrate you.