Business continuity plans tosecure the future of SMMEs
Managing and growing a
business is no easy feat, this task becomes even more difficult when you factor
in recessions, economic downgrades and pandemics. But the hurdles entrepreneurs
and their businesses are currently facing can also be an opportunity to pivot
their companies and brands.
 Arnoux Maré, Business Mentor
to SMMEs and MD of Innovative Staffing Solutions |
Businesses can create better continuity plans to not only
mitigate the current economic crisis but also ensure the survival of the next
disruption. This is how:
Planning
Any business that wishes to make it to the next financial year needs to have a
strategic Covid plan that includes a new operating model that will determine
the organisation's future. The way business has always been done, has become
redundant. Consumers act differently, they think differently, they respond
differently to marketing or product offers, they make purchasing decisions
differently, and they behave differently.
A well thought-out plan should, therefore, take this into consideration when
setting new goals and objectives, desired outcomes, metrics for measuring your
progress, timelines, and budgets. This process can be divided into basic
planning; information gathering; decision making; writing; review; and
approval.
But planning for the future cannot happen in a vacuum. This blueprint must be
accompanied by a situational analysis or audit to determine how your business
is currently affected by the challenges, specifically Covid-19 related
difficulties. This in-depth process needs to looks at the organisation’s
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and (competitive) Threats (SWOT) and the
Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE)
factors currently affecting the business.
While strategic planning can assist a business with its vision and defining its
overall goals, the planning tool will not resolve systemic issues such as poor
leadership and poor financial management.
Finances
One of the quickest financial wins that businesses can capitalise on during an
economic crisis, is to cut out unnecessary expenditures. This would have been
recognised during the situational analysis.
Rather than solely focusing on plugging the seeping holes, businesses must try
to create other avenues that generate revenue using the resources currently
available to the business. One way of doing this is to test new revenue and
pricing models with their “super-consumers”, those customers who spend
significantly higher than the rest and are emotional about their purchases.
This may require alternative revenue/pricing strategies, like gift cards and
subscriptions, as opposed to traditional transaction-based models.
Digital
The digitisation of a company’s offering cannot be overstated. As seen with the
current landscape, businesses that already made the digital migration before
the outbreak or had digital contingency plans in their Business Continuity
Plans (BCP) fared slightly better than those operating from an analogue system. If you want to know more details then go to this link. CEO, Arnoux Maré.
While not every component of a business can be digitised, entrepreneurs must
not wait for the next disruption before going digital. Their current and future
BCP’s must include a digital component if they wish to continue functioning
beyond the crisis. This also includes looking beyond the current offerings of
business and interrogating what new digital supplementary avenues the
organisation can add to its services/products.
Innovation
Another way to increase gains is to accelerate innovation. Rather than waiting,
companies that have near-ready products should move to launch them as soon as
possible, whatever bugs there are can be ironed out using field data gathered
from customers.If you want to know more details then go to this link. CEO, Arnoux Maré.
Entrepreneurs often shy away from change and rely on the already established
methods to achieve their goals, but during a crisis what is required is the
ability to recognise what your customers need and immediately move to provide
them with it.
This immediacy also includes moving launch dates closer than the anticipated
date to benefit from a captive audience eager for distractions.
Outsourcing
The lighter or more agile you are as an organisation, the easier it is to pivot
or circumnavigate hurdles. The presence and management of human capital, while
vital for business, requires a dedicated team of experts such as the Human
Resource department, but for a lot of SMMEs, this role often falls on the
managing director or CEO, the same individual responsible for strategising the
future of the company.
Outsourcing the elements of the business that are not involved in the core
functions of an organisation to a third-party service provider can free up
much-needed resources and afford organisations access to support teams it
otherwise may not have.
No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy and any business continuity
plans may only cover partial elements of any eventuality, but not having any
plan in place or failing to learn from the current and past crisis is an
infallible path to failure. Companies looking to grow from the economic crisis
they find themselves in need to go on the offensive and find new ways of
pushing forward.
If you want to know more details then go to this link. CEO, Arnoux Maré.
It is in during dark times that legendary companies and leaders are forged.
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