Are you equipped for business post Covid 19?

Perhaps this is a very difficult question for entrepreneurs under the current circumstances. Most South African entrepreneurs have had to battle a lot of difficult circumstances in order to establish their businesses. We constantly have to navigate the business environment with limited resources, limited market share as multinationals diversify their products and services to reach untapped markets. Of course, funding is also another issue as most financing institutions are less likely to finance an emerging SME with little to no asset attached to their name. Therefore, it may seem like asking an entreprenuer or small business owner if they are ready for post Covid19 business operations is asking a little too much to ask at this time.

What is Readiness Anyway?

First an foremost, Covid 19 has affected the way in which people think about their surroundings. This tiny shift has direct and in-direct consequences on how potential customers view any business. To fully define readiness, you first need to ask yourself a simple question, "Am I okay?" This is a psychological and an emotional question. It determines your willingness to continue pursuing the betterment of your organization. It checks how you are currently coping with the restrictions that are imposed on you for your safety. Can you see your business continuing for extended periods of time with the same restrictions in place? Like any person, you the business owner, are the concience and coping mechanism for your business, if you are not okay, your business won't be okay.

Secondly, this pandemic has added a new dimension to business continuity planning. Many organization's only looked at business continuity from a disaster recovery perspective, which limits the plan to the organization's operational continuity, simply because at any given point in our lifetime, we assumed an existence of an endless supply of potential and recurring customers. But what happens when customer's needs cannot be satisfied by your products or services? How do you then pull customers back to ensure your business continues?

Lastly, is your end goal still only profit? A lot of us entrepreneurs take for granted the impact of our solutions and products. We want to push them into the market so that they can generate an income and ultimately give us good returns. We focus on the aesthetics, features and terminology to hook potential customers and hope they never need to leave after they have had a taste of our superior product or service. We begin to panic if there is a change that redirects customers from our door step, this is reflected in how we react when suddenly our external environment forces this redirection. Therefore our goal cannot only be profit, we must be able to mean more to our customers beyond the profit margin.