Current at Monday 18 May 2020
We have been reflecting on the last 8 weeks and have concluded that there are three distinct phases that businesses are going through, the speed and timing of these depends entirely on the industry sector and the business owner’s ability to respond to the challenges in front of them.
Survival Through Alert Level 4 and Alert Level 3, this phase was about making decisions quickly with limited information aimed at minimising the cashflow losses the business was sustaining with little to no revenue.
Take time to reflect and acknowledge the decisions you made during a very challenging time, some you will have got right and some you will have got wrong, the important thing is that you made decisions and focused on moving your business forward. Well done on getting through what was an incredibly challenging period for all business owners.
Reshape
Where we are now, business owners need to be focusing on reshaping your business model to ensure that you are trading at least at break-even cashflow while complying with the COVID-19 requirements around contact tracing and social distancing.
This phase involves identifying the sustainable level of revenue that your business will achieve over the coming months andmaking hard decisions about reducing employee hours and restructuring your team to match the level of work available.
You should also be redesigning your business model to achieve profitability based upon your projections of future revenue for the year ending 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022.
Growth
For some businesses, COVID-19 has presented the opportunity for growth or has been the prompt to execute the growth strategy that has been sitting in a draw waiting to be pulled out.
The business environment has drastically changed overnight, consider how you can take advantage of this to grow your business. Where are the opportunities, how will you position your business to take advantage of the changed environment?