Using Data to Mitigate the Impact of COVID-19 on Today's Businesses
As the concern over COVID-19 continues, companies globally are exploring actions they need to take now to maintain their business. This crisis has hammered organizations forcing layoffs, reducing services, and creating anxiety among leaders and employees alike.
The C-suite has a vital role in making sure the organization can function as concern mounts over the scale and impact of the pandemic. They are being forced to make tough decisions about how to operate amid the chaos. What should they focus on, where can they cut, and how to prepare for the new world as the crisis eventually lifts – these are the thoughts weighing heavy on leaders’ minds today. Pairing high levels of uncertainty with mass amounts of new information mean they have to forge ahead without the luxury of past experience to help navigate.
There is a reason for hope, however. Information, data insights, and technology have fundamentally changed our capacity to successfully manage a threat like this pandemic and adapt for the future. Taking advantage of your data effectively to guide business practice and improve the well-being of the organization and its employees is the single best option to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.
Transforming data into actionable information and analytics that drive business decisions will fast-track the return to normalcy. Volumes of raw operational data are just waiting to be turned into valuable business intelligence assets that will draw the path forward.
Business intelligence helps leaders frame their strategy in three ways:
Looking at today
Understanding real-time or near real-time data trends will help prescribe rather than predict scenarios.
Having complete visibility into cash flows and other operational metrics is a critical first step to understanding the current business situation and achieving working capital performance goals.
Gaining access to available government incentives and programs and recognizing expense-reduction opportunities are a couple of examples of responding to the immediate cash-flow management challenges. Focusing on current business needs is integral to a companies’ overall COVID-19 risk assessment and action planning in the near term.
Looking to the future
The most critical analysis is a forward-looking perspective. Foresight provides organizations with the business and operating capabilities they need to position themselves for a successful post-crisis recovery.
A detailed assessment of future working capital and cash-flow requirements along with key business and division unit metrics will help to understand at what point, if any, is the continuation of certain operations no longer viable and suspending business activities preferable. Alternatively, the metrics could indicate what variable measures should or can be taken to ensure healthy operation.
Run scenario planning to ensure financing remains viable and to understand how much cash is needed and for how long. This informs considerations around such things as determining what capital investments can be postponed and which are required for creating a competitive advantage in the rebound. Gaining insight into end-to-end supply chain visibility for future demand planning, inventory management, and production planning and scheduling can ensure you have a robust framework for managing supply chain risk. Depending on what the financial scenario planning reveals, you may need to consider alternative financing options to support the future success of the business.
Looking back
Does the past predict the future? Maybe not, but it is the best way to protect us from being blindsided by any future structural shaking scenarios like this pandemic. Monitoring and measuring how the business gets through this crisis remains the best way to forecast for the future. Now is an excellent time to measure and evaluate business efficiencies, or inefficiencies, stemming from the alternate models of work that have been adopted.
There are two ways businesses can come through this crisis. You can use data to tell the story about the past, the present, and the future, or you can use a personal perspective (from gut instinct to experience). The problem with using your personal view is that it is often filled with bias and assumption. Using data is the only objective way to measure risk and lessen the impact of COVID-19 on today’s businesses.
Organizations that gain insight into their business in new and innovative ways will outperform those that don’t by making data-driven decisions that mitigate risk, drive innovation, and take advantage of opportunities for efficiency.