1. Refresh your strategy
As the broader industry landscape will change, your strategy may need to be adapted. Leaders should rapidly develop a view on:
- Likely future customers and customer trends
- Industry transformation & potential scenarios
- Given this transformation, what your company (purpose and identity) should look like in the long run to thrive
- Drivers of your competitive advantage (product innovation, delivery, cost, operational or business model simplification, other)
- Potential investment opportunities you can leverage (lower valuations for acquisitions, new talent pools)
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2. Simplify your business
Winners will be fast, lean, digital and focused. There is a need and opportunity for simplification across all areas of the business:
- Accelerate your organizational drumbeat by implementing efficient ways of working (digitally/remotely) with colleagues, customers and suppliers
- Avoid adding back complexity in the form of overly complicated or stringent post-COVID-19 rules (keep them simple, pragmatic and business-relevant)
- Eliminate organizational layers to shorten decision-making chains, trust your organization, keep meetings small and short and increase the number of “doers” vs. “checkers”
- Create agile, flexible organization models (e.g. multifunctional task forces in the regions)
- Streamline processes and accelerate your digital strategy to eliminate inefficiencies, reduce costs and beat the competition
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3. Focus on your customers and drive topline security
Ensuring you can effectively sell & deliver products to customers remains a key competitive advantage:
- Put your customers first. Reimagine your customer journey – how can you leverage what we have learned to accelerate route to market, offer best-in-class customer safety and satisfaction, and pioneer an entirely new customer experience in this new (digital) normal?
- (Re)segment your customers and set commercial priorities for the medium- and long-term
- Fully leverage digital sales tools, including e.g. AI-powered lead generation and digital outreach
- Stimulate and shape demand – leverage opportunities to gain market share through smart pricing
- Ensure your key operations, resources, and talent are simplified, efficient, geared to service your customers and equipped for structural uncertainty
- Put in place remote sales and service teams; digitize your end-to-end product delivery and sales process, ensure access to the necessary digital tools and training
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4. Future-proof your organization & talent
HR needs to serve as organizational architect, embracing the new normal to bring talent and transform the business:
- Assess the capabilities you will need going forward, focusing on skills rather than roles
- Ensure company-wide view of your talent pipeline, and lead global workforce planning
- Embrace the Future of Work to variabilize your cost base, tap into new labor pools and specialized remote expertise
- Harvest productivity gains from virtualizing work, while ensuring high performing teams
- Integrate COVID-19 requirements and achievements into the new work routine; pioneer new standards for health and safety
- Elevate your workforce, focus on well-being and build a resilient organization
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5. Accelerate your digital strategy
Digital is here to stay, and your competition may already be ahead of you:
- Upgrade your digital agenda to meet new customer needs and accelerate your execution drumbeat
- Ensure strategic leverage of your data, which will require urgent clean-up and implementation of an integrated cloud-based data platform – allowing for full visibility of your customer base and service, supply network, logistics, manufacturing/ quality, talent base and other
- Right-size your IT function to variabilize cost (renegotiate vendor contracts and retire old systems), simplify your IT, maintain access to talent and expose investment capacity for digital projects
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6. Build an agile manufacturing and supply chain function
Structural demand-supply instability is likely to persist. Pioneer new approaches to navigate it:
- With consumers holding back spending, businesses will have to live with periods of overcapacity. Winners will right-size their manufacturing, transferring fixed to variable costs wherever possible, and build an agile supply chain that includes alternative (fallback) manufacturing options
- Leveraging digital to create ultimate consumer/customer visibility, and ensuring a “zero-based” forecast are vital tools in predicting and navigating demand-supply fluctuations
- Digital factories that leverage AI and robotics imply lower labor cost and will allow companies to move to a more local manufacturing setup, decreasing operational risks
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7. Storm-proof your sourcing
The global pandemic, paired with factors such as climate change, mandate a resilient supply chain:
- Single-source is out, diversification is in – leaders need to look for alternative supply sources to avoid disruption, supply delays and the potentially resulting customer erosion
- Lower supply chain risk by gaining visibility of & addressing gaps in your multi-tier supply network
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8. Recognize that Finance is instrumental for your success
Cash is king, and risk management matters more than ever:
- Throughout this period of economic uncertainty, conserve cash and manage your cash flow
- Revisit customer and supplier pricing and contracts; anticipate bankruptcies in your ecosystem
- Review forecasting, pricing and planning models and re-evaluate methodology and data (much of it will no longer be applicable in the new normal)
- Put in place risk-management frameworks (e.g. credit risk, supply risk) and early warning indicators
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