Business Resilience: Key To Success For Businesses During COVID-19 Uncertainty
“Business Resilience is not only about coping with the existing risks and uncertainties in the business practices. But also about getting prepared for the unprecedented upcoming uncertainties that the COVID-19 pandemic presents to the world.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, uncertainties have been a constant phenomenon among businesses across industries.
Be it business practices, be it how the business works; uncertainties have prevailed in the market to the extent that it has become essential for the business to act with Resilience to survive in the longer run. Being Resilience is coping with the existing problematic circumstances and getting prepared for the upcoming unprecedented scenarios.
Business Resilience enables organizations to act with utmost urgency and efficiency, efficiently achieving their goals.
Business Resilience – Need Of The Hour:
COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the digitization of the business practices by bringing in all-new Industrial Revolution 4.0, the digital revolution; as they call it, resulting in digital transformation. This digital transformation has made business operations easier, agile, and smooth. But it has also made the data available more than ever before; which has led to exposing the data to possible cyber risks and threats such as data leakages and data theft.
There are various examples where the digital transformation has made businesses easier but has also posed threats.
These business threats need an immediate resolution to mitigate the risks and act with Resilience to act in time and achieve the business objectives.
For instance; The implementation of drones in the warehouse for inspecting and counting the inventory at the unreachable heights has eased up the manual process. But at the same time, it has also resulted in threats such as drone battery explosions and GPS denied environment.
Such instances make it essential to better prepare for such unprecedented issues that might result in the complete breakdown of the entire business process.
Hence, such scenarios make the business resilience the need of the hour.
Key Areas to Focus – Assessing Business Resilience:
Every organization consists of critical business units dealing with different businesses focussing on a particular business area. And each of them is has exposed to the risks and uncertainties the COVID-19 pandemic has presented.
Operations Management:
Operations are one of the central business units, especially in the organizations that deal with manufacturing purposes.
For instance; manufacturing organizations such as car manufacturing companies have suffered a blow due to the risks and uncertainties from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, one of the leading car manufacturers from Germany had to shut down its factories owing to its inability to provide the primary components required for the manufacturing purpose. This sudden shutdown resulted in a substantial demand-supply gap amidst the importers across the globe that entirely depend on this particular car manufacturer for their sales.
Therefore; operations management is a crucial area that must be business resilient to tackle risk and uncertainties.
Technology Management:
Technology is a core soul of any business as it forms the backbone of business practices.
COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in embedding the technology in the business practices more than ever before by evolving emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, Cloud Computing, and Business Intelligence.
It has further led to rising risks of cyber securities and data threats among the business practices in the organizations.
However, organizations are enabling the technology business resilient practices such as maintaining high-quality data that ensures data privacy and avoids data threats to combat these risks and uncertainties.
Organizational Management:
People matter the most, they say, and that’s entirely true. And what makes it even truer is that the risks and uncertainties of the COVID -19 have made a significant impact on the employees of the organizations, making them the most vulnerable.
Organizations have business units, and these business units have people working for them.
No matter how much the digital transformation has resulted in the digitization of the business practices, automation, robotic processes, bots are doing most of the work, resulting in the digital workspace. However, emerging technologies cannot replace humans entirely; as human intervention is of utmost importance for the smooth running of businesses.
Therefore, recruiting the required expertise and implementing robust employee-centric processes helps access the risks and uncertainties. And it also helps to combat them to achieve business resilience.
Conclusion:
The way businesses are working now and how companies will be working in the future won’t be the same.
The risks and uncertainties that COVID-19 has presented did not look normal earlier is the new normal. And it has changed the entire scenario of the business processes shifting the way businesses work to an entirely new ecosystem. It makes the businesses adapt to the emerging technologies. But it also makes them deal with the risks and uncertainties by making them more resilient in the way they do the business.
The key to success for the businesses in the COVID and post COVID era is not how they do the businesses; but how they do the businesses with more Resilience.
