In the midst of this panic and pandemonium, businesses can advance their business. It’s a troubling time we’re in, caused by the lockdown. Businesses are trying to reopen and make the best comeback in their lives. But let’s not be too hasty and race to get back to work just yet. Take a little time to rethink your business approach. There are multiple things you can do to make your business leaner, less expensive to run, hire the best staff and generally, bring about a new era of productivity and effectiveness. This can occur with new technologies, new policies and a total revamp of your brand and customer service. It won’t be easy, but you have the time to bring about new dawn and open your business just in time for the fall.
Making use of robots
There is a company called Boston Dynamics that makes incredible robots, specifically for business applications. If you have menial tasks that you simply offload onto your workers. If you’re a construction company their ‘Spot’ robot can be used to do surveys, make blueprints, transport tools and give you a view of some hard to reach places.
However, Spot can also be used in your warehouse. If you need extra help with storage, Spot can help you become more productive. It could also save you money by not having to hire as many people. Spot is fully integrated into the most popular cloud systems, so you can give tasks to spot from your desk and he will carry them out. Workers can also team up with Spot, so the lightweight items can be stored quickly, while the larger items that need humans to lift them or a forklift, can be stored by other means.
Automated robots are quickly becoming a normal thing in places of work. They can be used to lift small items, transport objects and become your eyes and ears in tasks such as surveying and inspecting your buildings and locations.
Brand positioning
Now is the time for you to consider your place in the industry and what you mean to customers. If you have always been a premium crafted brand, perhaps a clothing company that makes high-quality jeans or perhaps a smartphone company that only makes flagship models; then consider making more affordable options. Brand positioning is when you target a new niche or area in order to compete with your rivals on a better playing or perhaps entering a new competitor share.
The aim is to reposition yourself in the consumer’s mind. Maybe a certain demographic didn’t see you in their list of hopeful brands to purchase from. You could have priced them out. But with competitive pricing and effective marketing, you can position yourself into a new spot. You can also become more relevant in an industry, as you cover different types of products and services. So, as you get back to work, think about creating different versions of your products and services, i.e. make them scalable.
Faster and more reliable
Employees may be working from home at the moment, but in a week or two, they will be flocking back to the office. Lockdown is slowly lifting and business owners need to be concerned about revamping your IT infrastructure. As employees return to the office, they will be putting more demand on your internet and possibly more. Employees will want to work overtime and they will be pressed to meet deadlines once again. The last thing you want is for your internet to be down.
You need to know what you need to do to make your internet faster and more reliable. If you ever have a downed line perhaps caused by weather or falling debris from a tree, call a fiber optic splicing service. They have professional technicians that will arrive at the scene, no matter where you are. They will identify the issue and repair the wires. They’ll also help you troubleshoot problems such as in connection, speed or reliability.
Consider buying IT infrastructure for 5G internet. It will only be 5 years or so before this comes online. You need to have routers that can handle the great increase in speed and cables that can manage with the additional data. Your servers and cloud systems will also need to increase in size.
Hiring the best people
It’s a sad fact of this pandemic, but hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. On the one hand that is horrible, if you’re one of the businesses that did have to let people go. On the other hand, you have the pick of the field as now, you have an abundance of talented, skilled and experienced people to hire from.
The best way to hire the best people is to create a smooth process of testing and evaluating. Creating simple 20-minute or 30-minute aptitude tests that candidates can do while in the interview. It should reflect the types of tasks and responsibilities they will be doing if they get hired. Remember to have an efficient process so you can hire the best people, but do so in record time. Many other businesses will be doing the same thing and you need to snap up the talent while it’s there.
You should also be hiring people to work remotely. This should be in the job description specifically. Remote working jobs are going to become a normal part of work in the very near future. You don’t have to spend as much on your physical infrastructures like desk, chairs and the office space.
Slim down your C-suite
It’s a well-known fact that employee salaries are the largest expenditure every single year. It’s high time that you considered making your C-suite slimmer so you can save a lot of money and still function just as smoothly and at the same level.
But who should be cut from the boardroom? You can double your financial advisor to be your accountant, and move your accountants to the administration and or financial departments. The Chief Financial Officer should stay on, but his second in command should be merged into the other departments.
Rather than have a Chief of Public Relations or Chief of Planning you can merge these two roles and more, into the Chief Risk Officer. This type of professional will take on different types of tasks and cover all bases. They will be experts in qualitative and quantitative research. This way you can be given a full-fact numbers and statistics report and a report of what your customers are feeling, what the market is doing and the general industry sentiment about the future.
Buff your marketing approach
As businesses are encouraged to reopen, many CEOs will be skittish. Why should you reopen when you have lost contact with your customers? Marketing is the only way you can bridge the gap and find your consumers again. Here are the best marketing strategies you can be investing in.
Organic – SEO marketing boosts your natural or ‘organic’ search results and thus, new customers. This is done with excellent content marketing, making sure that you have good onsite, off-site and inbounding marketing links. Business blogs are a superb way to get new customers to land on your pages and become a first-time purchaser.
Automated – Email marketing is a great way to re-establish contact with your customers. Remind them of who you are, what you’re about, any discounts or sales you have going on. Make the emails personal, greeting customers by name and showing them their purchase history.
Social Media – Creating a 10-second ad could be invaluable for your social media marketing campaign. However, making a point-of-view video whereby you are speaking directly to the user is a great way to communicate your plans for the future and excite customers with the news. Create your own hashtag by working with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram so you can get a personalized icon.
Investing in a safe haven
Every business has to realize that the government’s stimulus package won’t be around forever. In fact, it will dry up in the new few months. Then, businesses will be back, on their own again. You need to invest in an area that can act as a safe haven.
Gold bullion is the best place for your business to invest in right now. The price of gold has gone up sharply in the past 6 months. It’s gone from $1200 to nearing $2,000. You should also invest in stocks, such as Tesla, Amazon and Samsung. These companies are rising head and shoulders above the rest in their industry. Investing in infrastructure projects such as 5G networks and economic-incentive projects such as airports and train stations is also a good idea.
Businesses are making a comeback but they’re still on shaky ground. You can take your time and change your business to become stronger and more efficient. Cut down your C-suite team if you can and make it more productive and slimmer. You should also invest in your IT infrastructure and upgrade your network to be faster and more reliable.
