Prioritization Post COVID
What Should Companies Prioritize Post-Covid?
If you would have asked top business leaders to name the most prominent disruptive forces on the horizon, the possible replies would have been sector divergence, artificial intelligence, Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). It's safe to assume and say that no one would have ever thought of a global pandemic on their list, yet the COVID-19 pandemic became the biggest disruptor across our world in every sector.
As business leaders look ahead positively to a road of recovery, they are made to face new and brutal challenges, redefined customer and employee expectations, news ways of normal, the still-vulnerable supply chains, and much more.
Top 5 Priorities, Pre-COVID-19
Global business leaders identified the following five as their top priorities:
1. To establish consistently delightful customer experiences across the complete customer journey.
2. Alignment of performance management and rewards to business strategies.
3. Enhancing or developing the brand's overall digital marketing strategy.
4. Enhancing data analytics capabilities.
5. Alignment of resource requirements with future-driven business objectives.
For a majority of businesses, customer experience, growth, and digital strategy are still on top of their agenda. Interestingly, leaders are now redefining these concepts with a purposeful and new understanding of the priority actions.
Today, emerging opportunities and business continuity are driving new priorities. The COVID-19 pandemic brought an evolving and complex set of challenges for every business, wherein safeguarding business continuity was the top priority, while also working simultaneously to adapt to new circumstances, seize new business opportunities, and build resilience.
Top 5 Priorities Today
1. Alignment of resource requirements with future-driven business objectives
Aligning resources to objectives has moved to the top of the priority list. Today, private organizations fall broadly into two groups:
Those hit extremely hard by the pandemic and for whom the alignment of resource requirements means a combination of reorganizing, restructuring, or even downsizing.
Those who are making every possible effort to adapt to new business models that, in turn, are redefining their requirements around resources, competencies, and skillsets.
For both groups, the expansion of digital competencies has become more important than ever.
2. Embedding people plan within the corporate strategy
One of the most important things that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught to the world is that resilience is key and critical to sustainable growth. There is no denying the fact that customer loyalty, risk management, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence all contribute to organizational resilience, but it is the organization's "people" that contribute the most.
Therefore, it does make sense to create a “people” plan putting employees of the organization at the forefront to build a purpose-driven organization. The primary purpose of the organization should be to make continuous efforts to retain and develop talent, enhance agility, embed a culture of regular feedback, and implement performance-oriented work models.
3. Rapid product/service innovations
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped customer expectations, reflected in a significant surge in online purchases, and deliberate efforts and initiatives by corporates to keep the workforce motivated while working from home. Today, business leaders are emphasizing more on product and service innovations to cater to the unprecedented changes by adjusting their product and service portfolios accordingly. For instance, some fashion brands moved into large-scale face mask production and cosmetic companies made a switch to create hand sanitizers. Unarguably, some of these changes are temporary or focused on optimizing opportunities in the short term but others represent more significant, purposeful, and fundamental shifts in market demand.
4. Data Analytics
In recent months, the perceived impact and value of improved data analytics capabilities along with the sense of urgency have rapidly increased. Private organizations, after witnessing the massive impact of the pandemic on customer expectations and behavior, have started prioritizing real-time and predictive data analytics to identify changes in customer buying behavior, shopping patterns, and customer satisfaction levels, accurately and quickly. Therefore, the development of improved capabilities in internal as well as external data analysis has become more important than ever.
5. Building strong and value-driven strategic partnerships and alliances
A new entrant to the list of top priorities for success-driven organizations is building strategic partnerships and alliances. A powerful and seamless network of exceptional strategic partners can go a long way to enable growth by widening market reach, unlocking access to new expertise, or complementing a value proposition. For instance, Winning Moves Australia (a board game distributor) partnered with Deliveroo to offer 30-minute delivery of entertainment for redefining the concept of food orders by customers.
Conclusion
In today's challenging times, it is important for every organization to futureproof its business by looking at a broader set of purposeful, relevant, and seamless capabilities. It is equally important for businesses to balance their investments in money, energy, time, and other resources as they adapt, transform, grow, and evolve to reframe their future by driving sustainable growth.