Reinventing Your Business

The immediate response to COVID-19 is almost over. The challenge now is to reopen what the virus shut down and this means reinventing the business. It calls for a restructuring of operations to enable the organisation to continuously respond to the unpredictable – it’s about being designed for disruption.

In this report, Accenture outline five key steps to help navigate a range of scenarios as businesses reopen:

1) Put people first - A recent study showed that 62 percent of people trust their employer to respond responsibly to COVID-19. Knowing what is really going on in the lives of employees is essential to creating the next generation of successful business. It starts with responsible leadership.

2) Design spaces that work - More than 50 percent still have not established a good work-from-home routine. Companies must create a safe working environment that gives people confidence to return to work premises and to adjust to the new virtual /physical-hybrid way of working.

3) Solve in phases - The reopening is just the start. Companies should plan for a phased return that responds to unforeseen events, slippage, and reversals. Companies should see this not as a time to return to “normal”, but an opportunity to rethink, re-engineer and improve future operations.

4) Commit to an elastic cost structure - Having secured short term liquidity, companies will need to focus on the longer-term financial health and affordability of the business. That means moving from rapid cost reductions to building a resilient cost-management mindset, and from balance sheet protection to long-term investment.

5) Get future-ready - The secret to the long term success upon reopening lies in building new capabilities: fresh approaches to innovation, supported by more holistic technology strategies that support innovation at scale. Purpose, empathy and agility must be at the centre of new customer growth opportunities.