The word ‘crisis’ is part of the human experience, whether we’re willing to accept it or not. The COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in many ways but by no means is it the first crisis to hit the world like a tornado. Prior to COVID-19, the world had already witnessed crises of varying magnitudes and it will continue to do so long after the echoes of the current crisis fade away.

When it comes to organisations, some of them face crises with aplomb, while some fold under like a deck of cards blown away by a crisp breeze.

What differentiates the former from the latter?

How – and why – do some organisations find their way to the next normal with ease?

The answer is both deceptively simple and incredibly complex. The journey from chaos to triumph requires organisations and their leaders to reimagine their business. They need to step up their game and focus on certain strategies. Only then will they be able to return to full speed in a post-COVID-19 world.

Here are the three strategies organisations need to focus on in order to reimagine their business and come back stronger than ever before.

1. Adapt to new realities and rebuild operations

The pandemic has changed demand patterns, affected toplines and bottomlines, and exposed weaknesses in organisations’ supply chains, service delivery processes and communications channels. Firms that realise, acknowledge and address these new realities are able to reinvent the way they work and thus position themselves for the new normal.

In order to do this, they need to:

• Redesign their operations to be more agile and cross-functional
• Rebalance their asset base and supplier mix
• Regionalise their supply chain
• Improve transparency and accountability in every process
• Find new ways to create (or retain) competitive advantage and design new customer value propositions

And last but not least, rebuilding operations requires that organisations embrace the future of work. Remote work, use of automation technology and outsourcing are all strategies that firms can – and should – embrace in order to enhance employee engagement and improve their operational outcomes.

2. Find ways to recover and grow revenue

To recover from the current crisis, companies need to rethink their revenue profiles – yesterday! They need to identify and prioritise their revenue opportunities, adjust pricing and promotions strategies, reallocate spending and automate processes to boost sales. And they need to do all of this with urgency so they can position themselves for the long term and get ahead of the competition.

3. Accelerate digital adoption

The COVID-19 crisis has created lots of opportunities for digitisation for firms of every size and in every industry. As the crisis gathers further steam, consumer behaviours and demand patterns will continue to change. To analyse these signals and adapt quickly to them, organisations will need to adopt digitisation and accelerate the pace at which they do so. To this end, they will need to:

• Rethink customer journeys and develop digital solutions to make these journeys easier
• Harness the power of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Internet of Things to manage their operations, navigate new market realities and enable real-time decision-making
• Reduce IT costs and improve IT productivity
• Speed up the adoption of automation technologies to improve human resource productivity, efficiency and revenue-producing capability

In time, organisations need to increase the size, scale, speed and productivity of digital solutions. Only then will they be able to capture new opportunities quickly, serve their customers better and reimagine their position in a post-COVID-19 world.