The current pandemic has not just created a medical crisis but also an economic crisis with companies clamouring for business survival strategies to weather the losses incurred in the current scenario.
In times of social distancing, quarantine and lockdowns, how does one keep their business running against all odds? According to the latest survey by Gartner, a mere 12% of the respondents believed that they were sufficiently prepared to deal with the repercussions of COVID-19 and its after-effects. 56% said they were somewhat prepared while 11% said that they were relatively less prepared or very unprepared. These numbers can give you an idea of the global scenario everywhere.
So, while you are waiting for that government bailout to come through, what are the business survival strategies that you can implement to ensure that you are able to sail through the storm and emerge battered but victorious in the end?
Predict, Plan and Prepare
First and foremost, you need to predict how long the current scenario is expected to continue and gain an understanding of how your business should respond in case the situation worsens or lasts longer than expected.
Next, you need to plan what steps you may need to take to eliminate the factors weighing you down and keep your business afloat. Make sure that your plans include taking care of your employees instead of simply giving into the global pressure of cutting down your workforce. Take this step only if all other avenues are closed. You also need to reassure your employees and keep up their morale to ensure that things function smoothly.
Last but not least, you need to prepare a system that enables you to carry on essential services and allows your workforce to communicate and collaborate digitally. Place extra focus on employee payroll, healthcare benefits and on maintaining your supply chain, i.e. continuing the supply of your products or services.
You also need to prepare contingency plans according to your predictions for the near future.
When it comes to the current crisis, do not forget the adage- “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
Complete Cash Flow Forecasts
While the hope of a government bailout may seem like a shining beacon in the dark, you should not base all your plans and expectations on them.
You need to forecast your cash flow for at least the next few months. Assemble data and match your expected expenditure against the expected revenue to see what you can reasonably afford.
This will also offer you an opportunity to sit down and eliminate any unnecessary expenditure that you can avoid right now. Reduce any services you no longer need or processes you can outsource at lower operational costs. This is time to make smart, thrifty decisions and spend your cash wisely.
Create a Robust Ecosystem
In order to keep your business running like usual, you need to build connection and communication channels with your employees.
This involves creating a robust virtual workplace that allows everyone to work from home while sharing data, relaying new work instructions, and staying in touch with one another to ensure that tasks are being completed in a swift and efficient manner.
This system must also work to build relationships between employees and also enables others to step in when team members have to excuse themselves due to health or any other unforeseen circumstances. Creating a robust and supportive digital ecosystem is one of the smartest business survival strategies.
Manage Remote Teams
Simply creating a virtual ecosystem for your team is not enough. These now remote teams have to be managed efficiently and that requires a fully-functional digital workplace that allows you to keep an eye on things and track the flow of all processes and metrics to define and measure team performance.
Structured supervision like daily check-ins and progress reports can help you keep tabs on your team and also establish a strong sense of care and responsibility on your part.
Connection and Communication
Establishing easy channels for two-way communication can help you run the business as usual or at least keep your essential business processes running.
Communication features like live chat, internal emails, feedback features and video conferencing act as effective tools of communication ensuring that you and your team stay connected amidst quarantine and social distancing.
Weekly team meetings and showing empathy for your team’s problems can go a long way in motivating and reassuring your employees.
Meet Current Demands
As time changes, you need to change with them. Another way to ensure that your business services the current crisis is to ensure that you expand your existing range of products or services to cater to the current market trends and demands. For example, the current situation has witnessed a rise in the demand for cleaning services, delivery services and products like grocery, eatables and sanitizers, wipes, etc.
See where your products or services fit in the current equation and adapt accordingly. This is the time to act smartly and supply market demand while helping others. You can help out hospitals and healthcare workers by producing necessities like face masks, gloves or other essential medical equipment. See how your unique skills can assist those at the frontline of the battle against COVID-19.
Seek Partnership Opportunities
We are always stronger when we stand together and this means working together as well. One of the best better business survival strategies is to extend your products and services to other businesses that are currently struggling to meet the increasing demand for essential goods and services.
This way you are not only helping out those affected by the quarantine but also helping your business survive along with the others.
The ARDEM Collaboration Manager
ARDEM offers businesses a fully-integrated, cloud-based collaborative platform with multiple collaboration and management features that enable you to coordinate with your team and get essential business services carried out by a remote team comprising qualified experts with extensive industry experience. Using our smart and easy to use digital workplace should definitely be a part of your business survival strategies.
Flexible Digital Workplace
The ARDEM Collaboration Manager is a flexible digital workplace that allows you to collaborate with the remote work team and keep an eye on the progress of your project in real-time. You don’t even need to download any special software or app. You just need to open the manager on your regular online browser and sign in using the unique login credentials assigned to you. Once you are logged in you can use your dashboard to share data and instructions with your team members and assign new tasks.
Combining Manual Workforce and Automation
In times like this, one needs to carry out tasks in a smart, efficient manner. This means accomplishing your tasks using the perfect combination of manual efficiency and intelligent automation. Accomplishing this requires a switch to digital processing for all of your business decisions. Make smart decisions driven by data to moderate your operations.
Easy Data Sharing
Successful digital collaborations are driven by swift data sharing and clear communication. When using the Ardem Collaboration Manager, all you need to do is upload your files or simply drag and drop them into secure folders to share data. Similarly, the processed data is uploaded into secure output folders and an automated update is sent to notify you to download the final output.
Real-Time Feedback and Sharing
Our collaboration platform is integrated with ZenDesk, help desk software and our own proprietary ticketing system that offers you automated, real-time updates. The dashboard offers you a clear window into your processing and its customizable views allow you to view the analytics of your choice. You can also provide feedback on you processing in real-time and leave comments directly on the files.
Security
Another rising concern is the fear of a data breach and the issue of how to guarantee data security when working with remote teams. Let us put your fears to rest. ARDEM’s platform utilizes Amazon Web services and offers you all the stringent security measures implemented by Amazon itself.
However, that’s not all, we also implement a series of additional security protocols including single sign-on, one-time password and multi-factor authentication to ensure that your information stays safe and secure.
The ARDEM Advantage
ARDEM uses a combination of Data Entry, Data Capture, Automation, Machine Learning and AI technologies to process your data and business functions. As the volume of data that needs to be processed increases, ARDEM increases efficiency to boost accuracy and reduce your turnaround time while reducing your costs.
Business Process Outsourcing
ARDEM provides outsourcing solutions for multiple sectors including finance and accounting; healthcare and life sciences, government institutions, manufacturing, retail, logistics, legal and insurance sectors. For every new project, we build a custom team, headed by an experienced Project Manager and FTEs or full-time equivalents as required along with backup analysts to ensure that your work continues uninterrupted, come what may! Outsourcing your essential business process to a trusted outsourcing partner is one of the smarter business survival strategies out there.
Global Services
Our portfolio comprises tried-and-tested processes for a variety of essential business functions including accounts payable processing, invoice management and utility bill management from start to finish.
We also offer extensive survey management and mail fulfillment services including generating lead forms and processing the fi9nal output along with printing and mailing all your deliverables.
While we already have robust processes in place, every process that we execute is customized and adapted to each client’s specific needs after careful study and consideration.
Distributed Service Model
At ARDEM, we function across continents to leverage diverse talent. Our headquarters in New Jersey house our sales teams and project managers along with our high-speed scanners and cloud-hosting services.
Our operations office in Lucknow is home to our data entry operators, analysts, developers and quality managers who capture, process and analyse your data with high-speed and efficiency. This distributed service model allows us to keep going even in the time of quarantine and social distancing by collaborating with our remote teams in India.
ARDEM Bots
This is the age of automation and at ARDEM we fully embrace the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide automation solutions for your processes. This is accomplished with our proprietary bots that are capable of carrying out multi-sequence steps and provide advanced business process automation for our clients. For eg., the Sumti and Gyan series of bots that are designed to collect and report data from survey questionnaires.
We further aim to create more bots specific to diverse business processes and grow the ARDEM bot family rapidly.
People, Process, Technology
The secret sauce behind our success lies in the optimum application of people, process and technology. We employ qualified experts with deep industry experience to evaluate and create robust processes that are further executed using advanced technologies including optical character recognition technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation.
Stay connected and work from home with the ARDEM Collaboration Manager (ACM) and have your business processes executed flawlessly by the ARDEM team. When it comes to battling the economic impact of COVID-19, we are with you every step of the way.