Cushioning your business during a pandemic or crisis

Cushioning your business during a pandemic or crisis

Hey, it’s been a minute but it’s always my pleasure to interact with you. Hope you’ve been well, personally I am better now than I was months ago. I bet every business man can now afford a small sigh of relief. When a business man tells you things have been thick, trust me they have been thicker than type K copper pipe… Don’t ask me how I know about copper pipes, I bet I have been subconsciously learning from my engineer friends. Lavington

They say every mess carries with it a message and COVID-19’s message has been loud and clear. Most business people had certain measures, policies and procedures put in place in case of a crisis but what they hadn’t factored in is a pandemic. Especially one that minimizes human interaction, is deadly and can be contracted in a blink of an eye. “Factor in a virtual working plan for your business”…That was COVID-19’s message to most businesses.

I believe most business owners have learned their lesson from the University of Life… Of course no one gets a certificate from that university, experience suffices and with that, I’ll share with you few tips on how to cushion your business against a pandemic or crisis.

For starters, be as transparent as possible with your employees and customers. Without these two sets of people you won’t have a business to run. Your customers need to understand why there is a change in operation, for example if they used to come to your store to shop, but you want to stop physical shopping and adopt online shopping, you need to communicate prior so that they understand why the need to change, for how long that will be etc. This will make them feel you care about them. Your employees also need to have clarity of the situation and you can seek their opinion where possible on how to mitigate certain challenges.

Same way human beings need healthy blood flow in their bodies to operate is the same way businesses need healthy cash flow to stay afloat. Protect your cash flow as much as you can. Reduce cost and minimize expenses where you can to ensure the rate at which money is coming in balances with the rate at which money is going out.

Go digital and be virtual if your nature of business can allow. Instead of paying office rent, your employees can work from home. Instead of having a gigantic retail store you can scale down and branch into ecommerce…The beauty of going digital is that it saves you some coins and allows you to reach a wider customer base.

Last but not least, guess work is the recipe for disaster! Have a proper business continuity plan. This mostly goes out to medium and small businesses. They are the ones often guilty of operating by faith and not having a business crisis management or continuity plan. Have clear set procedure on what needs to be done when there is a crisis and how to resume once the dust settles.

As the country opens up, not all businesses will resume, some died during the pandemic, others are on their death beads while others are heavily panting after a vigorous fight with the challenges the pandemic brought their way. For those who made it the other side props to you! For those who didn’t make it or are struggling, it’s not a loss. Your business might not have made it but your business management skills have been sharpened. They say nothing beats experience, out of it you learn and strategize better.

Before I call it a wrap, you can check out these business solutions https://bit.ly/36KqIa0 The E-commerce service came through for my buddy big time when he decided to go digital with his business. With that said, thank you for reading, catch you later!

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IMBA

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