Preparing Your Business for a Post-COVID World

Posted on: May 14, 2020

Modified on: June 28, 2022

How do you prepare your business for continuity after lockdowns? Are you laying the foundations for the post-pandemic world? Here are my advice:

We can help you with business continuity despite of limited and restricted resources through IT consulting and tech services.

We are hurting now but what should we do? Should we stop all spending on the business, cut corners, stay in survival mode. Isn’t that what got us here in the first place? I understand we are all struggling. But most businesses that are struggling are the same ones that were always cutting spending, cutting corners, and not planning for the long term.
The irony of this is the ones that did plan for the long term and were strategic are also impacted , due to most other businesses that did not have a solid strategic plan for their business. The unfortunate thing, in times like this, is we see the co-dependencies of businesses.

Imagine if all businesses had a well-advised strategic plan, a proper budget, professional advisors, the best technology, outsourcing set-up, and a contingency plan for the operation. We would all have been impacted but the impact would have been less severe.

Let me go through some of these points:

1. Strategic Plan

A strategic plan is a well-thought-out and written plan on what to do to make things go right and what actions to take when things go wrong. Like they say wish for the best but plan for the worse.

2. Proper Budget

A proper budget is about investing in the business for a return on that investment. Most companies see a budget as to how much they must spend, and they will always find a way to not spend that money. “Cheaper is better,” they say. But when you are investing, it is never “cheaper is better.” The amount of spend does not matter. The return on investment is the gauge.

3. Professional Advisors

That’s why professional advisors are invaluable. The most successful businesses are not ones that understand what they know but are the ones that understand what they do not know. They understand the value of outsourcing their non-core business functions.

4. Outsourced IT Solutions

If you’re not an accounting firm, you should not be doing accounting. If you’re not a law firm, you should not be giving legal advice. If you are not a technology company, you should not be making technology decisions. We are all smart and we can all google. But we are not looking up a recipe for our home where the worse thing may happen is your kids will complain but we are running a business where poor decisions can cause loss of income and affect the lives and families of employees.

Steps to Take

With all this said what should we do? Well, now more than ever we need to work smart. We need to look at our return on investment and this is from a long-term lens, not a short-term view. Short-sightedness is a business killer.
The good thing about this current situation is, that we are now forced to evaluate our business: who we are and what we should do. We are forced to be creative and be more strategic or we may never rebound. We have learned to stop thinking “it’s never going to happen to me” or “it’s not possible”.

Instead, let’s plan for what may happen and how we want to be as a business. I’m in technology and I believe wholeheartedly in having a strong technology firm that not only understands technology but understands how it affects your business.

Technology is the future and technology is the catalyst that allows most businesses to continue functioning even with limited and restricted resources. Hindsight is 20-20 only for those that have the money to lose. Feel free to contact us if you would like a better way of integrating technology into your business.