Balance protecting and running the business today with retooling the business for tomorrow and thrive after the pandemic.
Figure 1
Act now to protect and run the business today
Respond to the crisis and protect the business
- Model aggressive scenarios and focus on revenues, costs, cash, operations and organization
Ensure business continuity and stability
- Plan a cascade of more severe actions to preserve business viability, and identify what would trigger them
- Reduce or eliminate nonessential activity
Plan now to retool the business for the future
Accelerate through the recovery
- Forecast demand by geography, channel and segment
- Develop flexible operational, organizational, and financial plans to capture pent-up demand (or adjust for over-served demand)
- Prepare your cost structure and balance sheet for the future and begin to acquire new capabilities
Retool for the new world
- Rediscover the raw customer need while avoiding “average customer” discussions*
- Rethink strategic priorities and invest in or acquire key capabilities to leapfrog the next few chapters of your industry’s evolution
- Use digitization and partnerships to help your organization and operations increase resilience, scale and speed
- Start a learning journey to accelerate your most critical initiatives and build future businesses
* Important new questions need to be answered. For example, will the elements that customers value shift irrevocably? In many industries, leaders will have to determine how to serve their customers’ raw needs in a changed world. All companies need to seek out signals of changing customer expectations. They may adjust their go-to-market and distribution models based on new behaviors… Winning companies will also avoid any considerations of the “average customer.” When seeking new customer insights, they’ll prioritize direct conversations with their most valuable customers.