How to make your business more resilient in the wake of covid-19
With the world still gripped by the spread of COVID-19, many of us find ourselves wondering about the extent of the economic consequences this global health crisis will have.
The unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic have forced businesses, in particular, to re-evaluate their working practices and come up with alternative arrangements. Many have turned to remote working during this time and small businesses have been hit much harder by recent events. Some have even had to halt operations and close their doors.
For many businesses, the uncertainty of the current situation has left them ill-prepared and uncertain about how to proceed and prepare for the future. Many have the added anxiety of not being able to survive on diminished profit margins for several months.
The pandemic has, in short, exposed unresolvable issues for businesses.
It is also, however, a wake-up call for many to re-evaluate their practices and focus on what matters for each business’ continued survival, let alone success.
- Invest in your team
It’s no surprise that businesses that invest heavily in the growth and development of their workforce perform well during a crisis.
A well-trained workforce that is constantly challenged, encouraged, and given opportunities for personal growth is naturally more motivated and engaged in their work.
While this is an advantage at every turn, it’s especially so when remote working or work-from-home becomes the new norm. It may be easier for these employees to stay engaged, productive, and motivated in spite of changing circumstances.
- Streamline processes
A business should never be spending extra time or money on tasks that aren’t necessary. By cutting down on inefficiencies and streamlining business processes, a company can boost its productivity.
These processes should aim to make overall operations seamless. This means that by being in place, these processes will ensure that operations are smooth and uninterrupted, with little to no additional effort required to ensure that each task is performed correctly.
Eliminating inefficiencies also improves the likelihood of a company surviving economic crises as they can improve profit margins and spend money intelligently.
- Spend optimisation
Spend optimisation programmes are some of the most effective ways of adding value to your company.
Businesses need to look towards all areas of the business and related spending areas, including core spending (critical for the business) and non-core spending (general expenses including IT, utilities, logistics, fuel, fleet, professional services and others).
This type of exercise can generate plenty of value for any company in terms of a competitive advantage, cost reduction, risk optimisation, performance enhancement and other benefits.
Additionally, optimising costs will also leave more funds to be invested in ways that would add value to the business, such as employee training.
To be successful in this, three elements are critical:
– Having a long-term view and developing a strong and efficient ecosystem of partners/suppliers
– Leveraging a pragmatic project management approach and best practices in change management
– Having expertise in the various spend categories including market, innovation, business models, and contract-related spending
- Effective project management
This may seem like an obvious point but the more a business grows, the more difficult it becomes to stay in control of project management and ensure efficiency and the timely meeting of deadlines.
Project management spans a wide array of activities from resource allocation to final completion, and it’s critical that every step is optimised for greater value-creation.
In this process, hiring an external consulting company to revamp your project management systems may be the most effective solution for your business. Consulting firms can offer you industry expertise and recommendations based on proven best practices.
Professional consultants’ skills lie in optimising businesses and they have the necessary tools at their disposal to make the right call. Kronos Group, in particular, uses an Environment Perception Tool (EPT©) to assess the maturity of an organisation. Their project management consultancy team then evaluates these results and guides your company, step-by-step, with actionable recommendations to execute successful project management.
HOW A BUSINESS CONSULTING FIRM CAN MAKE YOUR OPERATIONS MORE RESILIENT
Working with professional consultants can help you optimise all areas of your business more thoroughly than internal investigations. This is because it can be difficult for businesses to stray from their working traditions and corporate culture.
These traditions and culture could be factors that are holding a company back and resulting in inefficiencies and losses.
At Kronos Group, we offer professional services in procurement, finance and project management. Our team of over a hundred skilled consultants have helped countless organisations optimise their operations through our pragmatic and visionary approach, which delivers the ultimate value to clients.
