Lucy Green, Managing Director of Business Development firm Larato (pictured, above), often quotes Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff, during the Great Recession, who said:
‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste’
“Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has impacted almost every business in the world. Although it is impossible to predict with precision what the long-term consequences are for industry there are some practical steps that every leader can take to strengthen their businesses in times of disruption and economic uncertainty.”
Green says that it is quite natural that business leaders are concerned over what might happen next and says that right now most organisations fall into two camps.
“In the first camp are companies that had a business continuity (BC) plan that allows and caters for a relocation of employees.
These firms knew what technology to deploy and from the ten CEO/CIOs I have spoken to recently, have all had a smooth transition to home working. Furthermore, each has noticed operational performance improvements in having employees working from home. Their BC plans had processes in place to handle such an eventuality and those processes have now been honed – they are closing service tickets and customer queries faster and as a result have happier than ever customers.
They are looking at how to sustain this operation post-COVID-19 but here, a number of dynamics come into play; ‘Why wouldn’t I want to keep a remote working solution?’
Their answer will be to offer flexible working to their staff as some people like it, whereas others need the human interaction of the office.
These business leaders know that remote working will affect the office space they need and right now they are doing the numbers on what percentage are taking it up and working out how much money they could save. These same leaders know the comms market will change for them and thinking it through; will they need less ethernet and more high-speed broadband?
In the second camp are another group of organisations that had no BC plan, had to turn on a sixpence, put stuff in and make it work – but it’s a sub-optimal solution. This group is in the majority and they are struggling, they are handling more calls but not set up for it and as a result customer service is dropping at a time when they really need to maintain it.
Business leaders here are pondering whether to optimise their stop gap solutions and how to go about it. They are already struggling to compete with the first grouping as their cost base has changed.
So, right now one group; ready from the get-go, are now enhancing their cost-efficient flexible working off a lower cost base while group two had no time to research what they did, put something in place fast but overpaid for it.”
“Unfortunately, they now need to go back to the start and evaluate their solutions – but they are way behind group 1 who are leaner, meaner and gaining competitive advantage”
