How the Covid-19 pandemic has brought in a new age of doing business

The year 2020 was the year to rethink, reinvent, restructure, and reimagine. With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting trade worldwide, new challenges turned into new opportunities. Shifting from the traditional approach of doing business, organisations needed to be innovative and discover distinct prospects that could render them profitable. Companies needed to be vigilant and agile to adapt to this dramatic, forceful change brought on by the pandemic. However, this gave rise to new management methods and ways of conducting business, which has propelled us into the future.

Increased Dependence on Technology
 

The foremost challenge faced by organisations during the pandemic was to avoid in-person interaction in the workforces. In response to this situation, companies opted for the work from home model to stay afloat. This was only possible due to existing software and technology, such as SAP, ERF, CRM and cloud-based services, that allowed collaboration between different organisational functions. 

Along with in-house transformation and digitisation, organisations have been striving towards matching customer demand and offering better customer service in real-time. Some of the best examples are virtual tours to famous destinations by tours & travels, online classes for education and extra-curricular, virtual dating, and online real-estate viewing.

As a result, many companies are concentrating on transforming their operations to digital avenues and addressing customer expectations in the post-pandemic world.

Supply-Chain Reconfiguration
 

One of the changes encountered after the pandemic struck the businesses was to rethink their supply chain and operations. The pandemic had disrupted the existing supply chain to a great extent, pushing companies to reconfigure them. Some of the reconfigurations include:

• Increasing inventory stock and raw material, instead of ordering Just in Time (JIT) 
• Opting for local/regional suppliers and depending less on global supply
• Being flexible and allocating resources whenever needed
• Adapting to new technology for more visibility, transparency and automation in the end-to-end supply chain

New Age Learning Opportunities
 

Although the outburst of the pandemic unsettled all of humanity, many learning opportunities have emerged. By working remotely or independently, people have developed many skills because they had more time to themselves, and online opportunities were ample. This lead to higher cognitive prowess to make judgments and decisions, better technical prowess to work with different technology, and higher social quotas through more interaction with new people.

While referring to how this affected businesses, employees had more to offer, and in turn, companies became more agile. Creative, out of the box thinking has been rewarded, and leadership is evolving to create a better work environment and culture.

Change in Mindset from Growth to Profitability
 

Businesses aimed for expansion, increased market share, overall sales, and turnover before the pandemic. However, profitability and longevity are now on top of the list and have become paramount recently. Organisations are focusing more on building the models that have always worked and are looking at profitability as the tool to survive, attract investors, and overcome lower sales.

Rethink the Way We Work
 

In many ways, the pandemic has changed the way business activities are performed. Now business meetings are being conducted on Zoom or Google Meet, and even seminars and conferences are hosted virtually. A large percentage of employees are working from home. Unemployed has the opportunity to earn money from home without investment and a leaner workforce is a part of the new normal.

Emphasis on Effective Communication
 

In an organisation, there are different people from diverse backgrounds working under one roof. As a result, maintaining harmony and creating employee engagement becomes difficult, especially when face-to-face meetings are no longer conducted and office socialisation is limited. Now, organisations emphasise on effective communication to build an inclusive environment since a sense of belonging for an employee is the key to accomplishing organisational goals. 

While these changes came as a reaction to a world crisis, they have made businesses agile and open to change. Not only are these changes in business functionality here to stay, they also future proof organisations in an effective way.

IDFC FIRST Bank provides a host of business banking solutions which can help your business growth in this new age of doing business.

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