The lock down resulting from the COVID-19 has thrown up a lot of problems for businesses across the globe. While each business deals with them, this temporary but a hard pause in the business has also thrown up a lot of opportunities.
Re-evaluate your systems and processes
Taking advantage of the pause, you should re-evaluate every system and process you have for the various functions in your business. Identify the gaps, put in place alternative processes and strengthen the overall way in which you run your business.
If you are a SMB and never had a system/process for a particular function, it would be a good time to put one in place so that you put your business on the path to growth.
Plan for the next 1, 3, and 5 years
Indian SMBs are not known for following a Budget as a routine when doing business. This would be a good time to sit back and make a plan, first to tide over the cash flow issues of the immediate 8-12 months.
Once you have a plan to tide through the immediate 12 months, you should then put a plan in place for the next 48 months so that you know what you target to achieve. It should be a monthly plan so that you can track the deviation of your actual performance versus the plan on a regular basis.
WFH is here to stay
Given that most services based industries have been able to function from home with the minor hiccups, you may want to have your long term business plan include a permanent provision for Work from home (WFH).
There are many benefits of WFH. It helps you save real estate cost as a business, results in happier employees as they don’t have to spend hours travelling and also gives them the much needed flexibility to achieve a work life balance, especially the female employees.
And to have WFH as a permanent feature, you first need to have a strong systems and processes in place to be able to assign work to your team, track what is being done and review the completed work.
Tune up your social media presence
The current break has resulted in an explosion in Social media usage. This would be a good time for you to look in detail at the message you are conveying through the various mediums - your website, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google My Business.
If you are a B2C business, you can also put a permanent feature through which your customers can reach out to you online – website chatbots, Twitter help handle, Facebook messenger or Google My Business.
Read a series of books
With little action happening at your business end, it would be a good time to sit back and read through the books you always wanted to get the inspiration for planning and growing your business. You can look up books in the fields of strategic management, sales, marketing, digital marketing, etc. and access them via any of the reading apps or those that allow you to listen to these books.