Gearing up your business for the second Wave of Covid

The professional realm has gotten a good taste of what the pandemic had in store for them. From thousands of businesses going bankrupt to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide losing their livelihood – remorse was a term known not by this invisible invader. 

While it’s been a considerable amount of months since the new normal took over, many business owners (those who survived) are still feeling the pinch of what had reigned on them early 2020.  The looming anxiety by virtue of the precarious state of business is but one of the factors causing business owners to check their accounts twice before sleeping. 

With the number of positive cases exponentially rising worldwide, the finger biting commences yet again regarding what measures do we need to get better at in order to ensure the survivability of business – and to ask ourselves the real question - “Have we truly learned from when the pandemic first hit?” 

Taking a page out of the books of business that did survive (and continue to thrive), here are a few pointers that may just ensure you retain your enterprise in this agile yet notoriously versatile business environment. 

Stash that cash! 

Many small businesses exhausted their cash reserves well into their 3rd week of the pandemic after their cash flow was dramatically disrupted. Thus, maintain cash reserves to ensure your business is secured if and when the second wave of covid does hit. 

Trim the fat 

Keen on surviving? Start functioning lean. Cut down all the extra expenses and focus on the bare minimum required to carry out all the essential operations (ideally without hampering efficacy). Create a contingency plan in the off chance that your business does shut down – where you can ascertain weekly and monthly expenses even after complete suspension of operations.  

Dream for more streams 

With many service lines turning redundant due to a shift in consumer behavior, discovering new service lines to create new revenue streams is a pertinent approach for the survival of a business. Business leaders need to adapt with current consumer behaviors, understand their requirement's and create a business model around them.  

Run for the funds 

Governments around the globe have begun to implement relief measures in an attempt to sustain their economy. The SBI funding scheme in India, being one of them, which primarily caters for small and medium sized business to assist them in keeping afloat. Thus, its crucial for businesses of these scales to take advantage of these schemes for relief funds to ensure their functionality and longevity. 

Keep afloat – go remote 

If the pandemic has taught us anything – it's that companies cannot just survive; but thrive remotely. While remote working approach may not be applicable for all industries, its definitely the hallmark takeaway lesson from 2020 for businesses. Sure, it comes with its own set of problems as well (which can be addressed for the most part), but that’s pretty much the precondition of any new standardized way of working. 

Vision 20/20 

In the new world that we live in, it goes without saying that adopting adaptive business models driven by dynamic teams seems to be the formula that’s been aiding the survivability of companies. Leaders that bolster and encourage change, while valuing innovation is catalyzing formula that facilitate the strong foundation of new age workforces, that plan to stick around for a long time. Crafting the vision by learning from the past, identifying the strengths of the present and exploring the trends of the future, can prove to be useful. 

Using our flagship program – Jamavaar? - Strengthscape has been successfully working with many organizations today who want to gear up and shield themselves from the second wave of Covid-19.