How companies are reinventing their business plans to fight Covid-19

As the pandemic is forcing industries to rethink their strategies, reconsidering your business' activities should be one of the first things to start your business continuity plan with. 

With a focus on how businesses should better face the dynamic market reality, we will give some insights about how your business can adapt to the current situation and overcome economic disruptions.

Can you reallocate your activities?

One of the main things that businesses can do to reinvent themselves is to look for new ways to reallocate their activities. Rather than deploying people working in departments that may no longer correspond to the current needs of your consumers, you can redirect your human resources in exploiting new work opportunities. 

For example, if your business is facing a short-term collapse, you can focus more sharply on having longer-term activities, just like a premium Chinese travel agency that has reorganized its setting. They invested their existing resources in better preparing their employees for a possible recovery. As a result, their new activities are focused on internal systems, skills improvement, and designing new services and products.

As well, we are looking at more and more examples of businesses that are rapidly changing their activities to meet customers' needs during crisis times, as it is the case of restaurants like Balance Grille increasing off-premise deliveries. 

They understood that customers need a fast alternative solution to restaurant closures, so they have been accelerating the shift to off-premise orders, and as a result of their early changes, the CEO announced that the strategy helped in avoiding a complete disruption of workflow and sales.

Innovate your existing services and products

This is a scenario that requires your full creativity to find an innovative solution to upgrade your services or products. If you were planning a brainstorming session within your company, you should focus on how to benefit from the potential of your products and services. 

The IT&C is one of the industries that will be skyrocketing these months since the market demand for online services has been increasing. Nevertheless, even the companies that activate in the IT&C sector can improve their services to offer better experiences for the public. 

The American multinational company, Amazon, has been taking fast actions since the crisis has started to rise seriously. One of their upgrades regarding the shipping options was adding the No-Rush Shipping option. 

The option is meant to divide deliveries that aren't needed immediately from those which are critical. As a result, they can prioritize the most critical shipments from their orders, therefore making fewer stops in the same areas weekly. 

If you have a product development department, it should be more comfortable for your business to follow examples like the previous one or examples of brands like Dior and Givenchy, which have used their facilities to produce hand sanitizers, following to distribute them free of charge to French health authorities.

Your new business strategy should focus on the fastest recovering industries 

By creating a map of areas and industries that are recovering faster from this crisis, your business will be able to quickly see the opportunities coming from markets within those areas of interest. 

Taking a look at China, a country that is in fast recovery, we can already see the software and services, and healthcare equipment and services blooming again since their stock price increased with an average of 12%.

In this context, we came across an example where the existing challenges were transformed into new opportunities for a global food & beverage chain. They have been shifting towards launching a long-term product mix in China, including health-related products, imported products. To fully benefit from the rising software market in China, the conglomerate has decided to focus on online sales channels.

While targeting new locations, your business should consider the following pieces of advice: 

• SMBs need to evaluate their approach by business 
• SMEs should calibrate their approach by division

So take the opportunity now to develop a new strategy that will help your business grow, regardless of the global crisis we are currently facing. 

Move your offline activities in the online

By now, many businesses should have already shifted their focus on digital transformation, and broadband companies are doing their best to meet the higher demand. Even more reasons for your business to move its activities online. 

If we think of industries that benefit from the live human experience, such as the beauty industry, it might seem harder to believe that they can increase their income by moving on digital. 

Even so, a Chinese cosmetics company named Lin Qingxuan is the opposite example, showing us that there is power in benefiting from adapting and overcoming challenges. The company had a 200% growth compared to the previous year, after it transformed all beauty advisors into influencers, as a result of closing 40% of its stores. 

Also, in China, a leading instant noodle and beverage producer named Master Kong, has anticipated the shifts towards the online movement, as an outcome of the Coronavirus outbreak. The company has deliberately started its transformation plan since the early stages of the pandemic, by:

• Daily reviewing dynamics to constantly prioritize their efforts
• Focusing on O2O, e-commerce and smaller stores to ensure the flexibility of its supply chain

The company's results were:

• Faster recovery by 50% of its supply chain
• The capacity to supply 60% of the reopened stores (which was 3x than its competitors)

When deciding on moving your activities online, you have to be fast but strategic, so analyze quickly the opportunities you can take and invest your efforts in ensuring your business' continuity.

Final thoughts

Considering what your business' opportunities are, but more importantly, its possible threats should be crucial in moments like these. Having an extensive view of how you can grow your business by reinventing your existing strategies should be your main driver in the following months. 

Find out how you can keep up in these challenging times, adapt, and even transform a crisis in an opportunity by joining our series of free weekly webinars. If you want to be updated with our online activities and share your experiences with other businesses, you can also join our business community groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.