COVID-19: Strategy to protect your business and staff

Best Practice

min read

During these strange and turbulent times, many businesses are wondering how they will survive and if they do, will their customers survive with them? The impact of Covid-19 on businesses of all sizes, their employees and customers could be devastating.

Covid-19 is not like any crisis the business community has ever encountered and conventional approaches to crisis response management may not be sufficient for business to see its way through the current challenges. It goes without saying that protecting yourself, your employees, customers and connected families and lessening the impact on the NHS should continue to be your main priority. No doubt and where possible you will now have closed your offices in line with Government advice and will be operating with remote working arrangements in place.

If you have been ahead of the curve, you will have created a contingency plan which now acts as your blueprint for the coming months. If not, it’s not too late. Firstly, you need to identify key areas of your business which are vital to keep business wheels turning; this will vary from industry but it’s fair to say that operations/production, customer support, marketing/communication and finance are vital to a typical organisation’s day to day running. And if you do have remote workers, IT support will be necessary to troubleshoot technical issues quickly.

Our 10-point Covid-19 Business Continuity Action Plan will help you shield your business for the next few months whilst we all navigate our way through these unprecedented times. We believe that with planning, proactive communication and a can-do attitude any risks can be significantly minimised.

Where possible establish a senior team to manage the key aspects of the Covid-19 Business Continuity Action Plan; and should include Operations, IT, HR, Sales & Marketing, and Finance.
Monitor short- and medium-term cash flow (6 – 12 months); plan urgent cost cuts to conserve cash, put the brakes on non- essential spending and consider key expenses such as employee salaries, premises expenses and other fixed costs. This period of containment will no doubt create substantial revenue disruption, which may not bounce back quickly, so plan for multiple quarters of lower revenues. Keep lines of communication open with suppliers that need paying over next three months and see what costs can be reduced, deferred or can be spread over a period of time. However, make sure these are fair to all parties – you could make the difference to your suppliers staying afloat too. Remember that we are all in this together.
Make use of business resources provided by Government and financial institutions. Many initiatives have been put into place to support UK firms such as VAT holidays, support with staff salaries, business interruption loans and reduction in business rates, with further support evolving daily as the Government looks to prop up UK businesses throughout the pandemic (to learn more, click here). Remember to speak to your bank – they have a social responsibility to support you.
Manage disruption in operations and stabilise the business to the new normal, ensuring security of supply where possible. Defend against revenue decline by shifting marketing spend to optimise demand. Look at ways of keeping in touch with customers and remote workers via video conferencing, avoid cutting prices indiscriminately, but consider promotions, discounted add-ons or other tweaks to your offerings to suit the short term changes in overall market needs.
Keep cash flow moving; invest more time in your credit control functions and continue to issue invoices and where necessary, follow up overdue payments. Invoice as you usually would, make sure that payments are coming in from your customers and if they are not being settled, act quickly to limit the domino effect of bad debt.
Safeguard your business against ‘bad debt’. A worthwhile exercise is to look at your current debtor book and consider how these customers might survive this pandemic. Are your current customers financially stable enough to weather this storm? Look at identeco.co.uk to get a clear insight into your customers’ current stability and financial health. Consider requests for more relaxed payment terms for customers who are likely to come out of this stronger. This will likely strengthen relations, protect your business and help you focus on key clients if you have reduced headcount due to furloughed workers.
Identify alternative supply chain services should the virus re-emerge in new territories or shut down in other countries. Make sure that you are versed in alternative global providers should your key supplier be unable to deliver.
Accept that many internal systems including broadband will be under significant pressure which may impact performance and output. Consider adding an e-commerce functionality to your websites or adding a live chat function. There are many providers that can offer this remotely or speak to Controlaccount should you need some support here. Make sure that your management of personal data remains stringent. This may have an impact on what can be worked on remotely.
During this uncertainty it’s easy for marketing tasks to drop down the list of priorities, however marketing and regular communication is essential. Keep communicating, engaging often with customers, suppliers and staff (whether they are working remotely or furloughed) via email and websites. As mobile usage increases during this period, explore digital marketing activities.
Plan your comeback. What will you do differently after this crisis has passed (which it will)? Perhaps you realised you need a better infrastructure for remote working, or you need a base contingency plan which can be called upon quickly. Think about how you are going to get back to business quickly with some solid marketing strategies and perhaps new product or services to launch.

How can Controlaccount help your business

Controlaccount Plc provides Business Process Outsourcing services to SMEs and global businesses.