The arrival of COVID-19 radically changed the global business landscape overnight. While some SMEs have had to scale down, slow or temporarily close operations, others have had to completely reimagine their business model. SMEs looking to plan their next steps can use this period of uncertainty to prime their business to be ready to relaunch when COVID-19 restrictions have eased.
Here are some ways to prepare your business to be trading-fit, keep staff engaged and prepare for success after COVID-19:
Overreact now for success later
Prime your business
Stay visible
Revisit your strategy
“Overreact rather than underreact”. This was the advice of our co-founder Brett Meyers in conversation this month with our CEO Paul Byrne on the Entrepreneur Experiment podcast with Gary Fox.
For SMEs looking at their budgets and cash-flow, making hard decisions now leaves the space to revise strategies and release cash-flow when opportunities arise later on:
“It’s trying to find green-shoots of opportunity for every business and I think that by cutting hard early you buy more time to find that rather than constantly chasing the next cost cut,” Byrne believes.
COVID-19 has brought change and uncertainty for many SMEs but there is an opportunity to ready your business for when restrictions are eased or lifted. Some ways to get your business and teams business-ready are:
Planning is key to success. Aligning teams to collaborate together with a project management tool could be a way to ensure everyone is on track with objectives, deliverables and changes to strategy that occur. Asana, Trello, Jira, Atlassian or Basecamp are some recommended by the CurrencyFair team.
Assess if your business is using the right platforms and tools for the business you want to be going forward. From the security software in place to the right CMS for where your customers will be, taking the time to review the systems you have in place now can lead to more efficiency for your business.
While some people can adapt easily to working from home, others may struggle balancing family with work or adjusting to the lack of social interaction. Keeping staff engaged and connected could help them stay focused.
Remote workout sessions, quizzes and socialising via video calls allows employees to drop in and connect if, and when, they need to. It also maintains team relationships, which is key to the success of any SME.
With projects postponed, budgets adjusted or reallocated, some team-members might be finding themselves with free time in their calendar. Internal upskilling or training in other systems and platforms used by peers, means colleagues are expanding their skill-sets. Plus knowledge-sharing always brings unique insights to other teams.
If your business did not have the need for a website or the ability for customers to order via your site before, now could be the time to look at how to stay visible in front of your customers online.
There are many easy platforms that can support businesses in reaching their customers online for example Squarespace and Shopify for website design, or Marketo and Hubspot as marketing solutions.
Using this period of time to understand your customers even more could lead to better online marketing and more customers. Reach out for their input and keep the lines of communication open with customers via:
Targeted emails and offers
Surveys about your product
Video demos and free content
Regular updates on social media
How can you maximise the return on your efforts during this time? Comparing your current service providers and suppliers could mean identifying new ways to save money and provide not only cost-efficiencies for your business, but even better service for your customers.
Like with a CurrencyFair account, where customers have a choice in how they exchange while our platform's user-friendly interface makes it easy to make the most of the suite of features we have to offer. Customers can exchange right away at the best available rates or can be ready to move when the rate is right by:
Creating a rate alert for their favourite currencies. Create a rate alert.
Use our peer-to-peer marketplace to request the rate they want and match with peers ready to exchange at that unique rate. Discover the marketplace.
As a leading fintech platform, our digital technology allows customers to access bank-beating rates no matter where they are. That’s why using our service and support while staying at home will remain as easy and accessible as always. If you need to contact us, just email support@currencyfair.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.