You stand at a precipice. Through no fault of your own, your business has had to undergo enormous hardship. The prospect of returning to normal may seem a long way away, even as some other businesses tentatively prepare to reopen their doors. Still, instead of looking at this as a chance to return to normal, businesses should view this as a chance to return to “better than normal”. To show employees a better life after lockdown and emerge leaner, more agile and more cost-effective than ever before.
This is your opportunity to ditch operational dead weight and become more proactive. In these uncertain times, maybe your business needs to go on a diet…
Remote working… it’s not just for lockdown
Your employees have spent over a month adjusting to the mixed blessings of working from home. They’ve established new rhythms and working schedules, and are slowly learning to manage their own productivity effectively… all while home schooling their kids and managing the minutiae of the household.
Indeed, forward thinking businesses may wish to consider making lockdown a permanent arrangement for some employees, at least on a part-time basis. There’s evidence to suggest that employees can actually be more productive at home (especially once the kids go back to school). Moreover, it can make significant savings on your overhead costs and even improve your business’ environmental footprint, too!
Stop paying a fortune for your business calls
Every business needs to make a lot of outgoing calls. Especially when you’re chasing up sales leads and adopting a proactive approach to customer acquisition. But if you’re still going through networks, you could be losing a fortune in margin. Instead, try using voip for small business. Voip (or Voice Over Internet Protocol). This allows your team to make clear, reliable calls for a fraction of what you were previously spending. You can make as many local, national or international calls as you need to and there are no costly setup fees to eat into your profits.
Re-evaluate your processes and find opportunities to automate
You’ve recently had to make huge changes to your operations to try and react to the pandemic. But now’s the perfect chance to develop a proactive stance and look for further opportunities to make changes to your operation. Especially when it comes to using automation to trim the fat from your operational processes. Here are just a few examples of how you can use automation to make your processes leaner and more efficient without compromising on quality.
Your employees have already shown you how quickly they can respond to change in their operations. Why not ride that wave now?
Take a long look at your competitors
Finally, it’s always worth taking a look at how your competitors have adapted to the changing circumstances. Competitor analysis has always been a great way to ensuring that you retain a competitive edge, and it can help you to respond to the crisis in ways that you may not otherwise have considered.
Adversity has a way of bringing out the best in us. As your business adjusts to sweeping changes now is the perfect time for it to shed some weight and bounce back leaner, faster and more proactive than ever.
