With the recent ease in regulations and other markets also slowly returning back to normality, business owners are eager to restart and resume back to the pre-covid state. However it is now crucial for SME owners to reflect and look at how their business has been impacted, and the overall feeling following these past events.

Reactions to COVID – Common Mistakes

When news of the pandemic first hit, and markets started implementing thorough lockdown measures, a lot of businesses switched into ‘panic mode’ in an effort to remain afloat and weather the storm. This has unfortunately led to some mistakes that have hindered sustainability.

Risky Pivoting

Despite a number of new businesses having emerged during this time or existing ones having made changes that lead them to thrive, risky moves aimed at penetrating new markets don’t always go as planned and in some cases resulted in pivoting not being the ideal solution. Although innovation is highly encouraged, businesses that tried to achieve this without a thoroughly thought out business strategy found it difficult to meet these new goals.

Resisting Change

For business owners that weren’t quick to adapt and resisted the change, found it tough to manage and sustain their business. In such unforeseeable situations, quick thinking and innovation are necessary for any entrepreneur. An example of embracing such change is the quick rise to digitalization locally. A lot of businesses (conditions permitting) were able to switch to remote work and made it possible to remain afloat during this time.

Planning the Future of your Business

The current business climate, although still being quite uncertain, makes it an ideal time to plan a new journey for your company with newly aligned goals and strategies.

The aim is to build a stronger business moving forwards, however, this requires a clear and effective strategic plan carefully outlining how your business can do this.

We can help you to build a strategy for success by looking at:

• Taking a fresh look at your business
• Understand which direction you want to head towards
• Find new opportunities to get on board with
• Future-proofing your business

Implementing a Successful Post-COVID Business Strategy

For a strategy to be successful in reaching its goals, it should be set out as a clear roadmap aimed at directing you and your employees to achieving these goals. It is important for a good strategy to:

• Clearly define and outline the steps and priorities that need to be taken.
• It must be carefully thought through and well researched – harnessing your Unique Selling Points and what gives you competitive advantage.
• Look at competitors and gain learnings from their actions.
• Future proof – the ability to deal with any other future disruptions.

There is nothing that can be done to prevent such disruptions from ever taking place again, however, what we can do is try to mitigate such situations as much as possible and plan alternative routes in advance for your business to fall back on should the need arise. To achieve this, businesses must consider various factors including the social, economic, political and technological impacts.

Managing Cashflow for a Rainy Day

A good cashflow keeps businesses operating and allows for funding of short-term costs. To be able to restart your venture successfully, proper and efficient management of your working capital is mandatory.

Supplier Review

For a business to start thriving again a healthy source of stock is needed and thus reliable suppliers are crucial to a successful resurgence plan. Furthermore, shopping around for the most cost-efficient deals will ensure you are getting the best offer available.

Business Doctors Malta can help you move your business away from the shadow of COVID. Through our Feel-Good Factor test, we can help you assess where your business and team are currently at, and through a handful of questions we will send you your personalized feel-good score and analysis together with complimentary resources to help you move forward towards a brighter future.

Get your feel-good score here.

Read more about this in our previous blog post here.