Since the eruption of the pandemic, the business landscape has become highly unpredictable. To stabilize your company’s operations and increase your profit margins, you need to keep testing and tweaking your business strategy.
In this article, we share several previous insights that will help you prepare for 2022.
Address the Changing Employee Needs
Since the Coronavirus pandemic outbreak, your employees’ lives have dramatically changed. Travel bans, tragic loss, career uncertainty, and the constant fear for health have become their New Normal.
Therefore, a big salary is not your employees’ top priority. In 2022 and beyond, the quality of life will be their top priority.
For starters, offer more flexible work arrangements. Remote and hybrid work have significantly improved employee productivity, engagement, and morale. According to PwC, 83% of employees say they are more productive when working from home.
Therefore, ask your team about their work preferences. Studies emphasize that 39% of employees would quit if their employers made them get back to the office.
Prepare for Financial Challenges
Coronavirus introduced businesses with a plethora of new challenges. Supply chain disruptions and economic instability are the biggest threats to small business growth. To keep up with the ever-expanding COVID-19 pandemic, you need to prepare your business for future financial challenges.
Coronavirus has disrupted supply chain management and resulted in massive supply delays. Even if you pay for your supplies in advance, a vendor might not be able to deliver them due to international shipping restrictions. Without having trade finance mechanisms in place, your business may fall behind on payments or customer service. That funding method lets you pay your suppliers upfront without compromising your business operations or financial stability.
Digitally Transform your Business
Over the past few years, the adoption of digital transformation in the business ecosystem has skyrocketed. Industry experts predict that global spending on digital transformation will exceed 2.4 trillion by 2021.
The COVID-19 crisis has made the process even more significant. According to a global survey, over 97% of businesses emphasize that Coronavirus has accelerated their digital transformation.
Digital transformation should reimage all areas of your business, from customer service to logistics. It requires a complete overhaul of your company culture and processes. By investing in cloud technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and advanced data analytics, you can bridge the gap between your workers, data, and customers.
CRM is a perfect example of business process optimization. The software connects your sales, marketing, and customer service data, eliminating the silo mentality from your organization. It automatically captures customer data across multiple channels and keeps it in a central location. That significantly improves your workflows and employee performance, allowing them to deliver faster and relevant customer service.
Protect your Business against Cybercrime
As mentioned above, digital transformation delivers numerous benefits to your business. It automates a wide range of repetitive tasks. By migrating to the cloud, you allow employees to work remotely and communicate from multiple locations. Digital commerce makes your brand available 24/7, even during the lockdown.
In other words, digital transformation empowers your company’s growth. However, its implementation comes with countless challenges. One of them is cybersecurity issues.
With the rise of remote work and eCommerce, online crimes will take a central place in 2022 and beyond. For hackers, the pandemic is a chance to exploit the vulnerability of the remote workforce. According to Deloitte, 47% of cyberattack victims experienced a phishing scam while working from home.
The reasons for that are multiple. For starters, remote employees use unauthorized computers and unreliable internet networks for work. They scroll down social media feeds, visit numerous unsafe websites, open emails from unreliable sources, and click on suspicious links.
Therefore, to strengthen your cybersecurity efforts in 2022, invest in employee cybersecurity training. It should raise their awareness of cybersecurity risks and common network vulnerability points. The training program should teach them to recognize online scams and avoid falling victim to them.
Next, set clear cybersecurity protocols and policies. Here are several practices that may help you:
- List the locations eligible for remote work, such as a coworking space or their homes. Explain why coffee shops with public internet connections are never a good option.
- List the cybersecurity tools they should install on personal devices while working, such as antivirus, anti-malware, firewalls, etc.
- Set rules for creating passwords on business-related platforms.
- Introduce strict reporting policies and guides in case of cyberattacks. Employees should understand the chain of command and know what to do in a crisis.
Over to You
The feelings of unpredictability and fear dominated the business landscape since the Coronavirus breakout. The same applies to 2022 – no one knows what exactly it will look like. Therefore, the goal is to enhance business flexibility and maximize its stability on the go. Only that way can you prepare for sudden changes in these uncertain times.
