Nitin Dumasia, President & CEO
Growlity, Inc.
July 30, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted business models, global trade, demand & supply relationship and our lives at large in an unprecedented manner. The impact has been horrible for millions of people across the globe. Trade and development practitioners, academics and the public increasingly reflect on the recovery period and the implications for global supply chain and socio-economic development. During this tenure of this pandemic time of last 4-5 months, I have created opportunities to talk to hundreds of key business stakeholders ranging from CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, Employees, Partners, Service Providers, Customers, Suppliers, Promoters, Shareholders, Advisors and Government Authorities aligned with Mid-sized Companies especially in United States of America, Europe and Asia Pacific region to know the outcome of their introspection on how to get ready for the ‘new normal’ conditions after COVID-19 and be on the forefront of generating resilience, inclusiveness and growth with sustainability in the future.
Surprisingly, everyone is working on something as per their current state of wisdom to be in the business or to beat the weakest competitor of their targeted market. The conversations came out to very interesting insights as listed down below:
1. Refurbish Balance sheets and Cost Structures with Fresh Strategic Objectives
Financial crisis and Cash crunch is the biggest impact of the pandemic in last two business quarters, entire world has witnessed. During my talks with Financial chiefs of mid-sized companies, the deepest insights which came to the surface, is to re tune the implications of their balance sheets due to limited top line income flow, hot on the cash to cash cycle, burden of expenses and salaried to be paid to keep the talented minds be resilient enough to manage their families. One of the common salvaging method i could read out through minds of these mid-sized companies’ CFOs, was resetting the balance sheets and manage the cost structures to keep the cash crunch as low as possible flavoring the same with fresh and value added strategic objectives for short and long terms.
2. Redesigning business offerings for superior value creation
When the conversation tuned to chief of Sales & Marketing professionals, it’s realized that the paid was much more deeper. The challenges for running the marketing campaign, customers were not coming to streets, customers wanted products and services to reach to their homes and working places, that too only essential items for months, made these bright minds to unable reaching even to their set targets. One lady, heading the corporate sales operations based out at California mentioned to me that this is the time to shift our products to important services if you have more confidence to do so. A regional marketing chief of hospitality industry from New York City, gave his suggestion to reach out as many as customers, even with reduced margins as everyone was offering attractive pricing offers with new hopes to be in the game!!!
3. Push In Digital and Virtual ways to transform conventional businesses to need of an hour
We all have witness that the first two quarters of 2020 have been proven as the revolutionary months for digital adoption where people have explored the integration of technologies to upgrade their slow, weak and old business processes. It’s true that even today around 40% mid-sized companies operate without even having ERP or MRP systems in place. However, mid-sized CEOs claimed that they were busy in sorting out their struggle on productivity measurement tools, data analytics and reduction of manual interventions from their existing processes. But, I have seen some the vibrant minds to work upon creative technologies like continuous improvement software, data analysis automation and building real time decision support system with the help of Industry 4.0 in their organizations.
4. Erecting superior Safety, Flexibility and Productivity into Operations
The ones who have taken their inherent courage to introduce change and business transformation programs even in this times of crisis really went ahead from ones who are still thinking to adopt it. I could observed that how priorities for global leaders changed from Personal hygiene and Occupational Health & Safety standards in first couple months to structured business transformation related activities to build culture of doing more with less. One CEOs from South Africa, who is a good friend of mine, touched very fundamental stuff during over virtual conversations, that, On Time Delivery in Full Quantities (OTIF) would remain one of top priorities for both product or service provider or end users.
5. Welcoming Design Thinking in Corporate Governance System
This area was never thought in length for years, since, the priorities and commitments of most of the CEOs and their Compliance officers to just be in the business, win more customers and enjoy the best possible margins and EBIDTA. But, COVID-19 has made people to start thinking differently, raised questions on their internal capabilities to digest the long terms gains and keep that to an autonomous cyle for constant Growth with Sustainability. Many business leaders are now questioning their business compliance to become risk free and that too with capability development of their key staff.
Nitin Dumasia is President & CEO of Growlity, Inc. He can be reached out at [email protected]. Growlity, Inc. is USA based Management Consulting Firm, providing professional services worldwide with their unique methodology to achieve Growth with Sustainability for their client. Growlity, Inc. is one of the first Virtual Consulting organization to offer their unique proposition called “Pay as you achieve Growlity” to their clients to ensure the enablement of optimum potentials. Log on to www.growlity.com for more information.
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