As many businesses are struggling with the effects of the global pandemic of COVID-19, It is now essential to look for a strategy for the long term in post-covid business environment. The crisis is getting over and going beyond that; the strategy is more of a matter of responding to the crisis and also a matter of preparing for a better future.
In order to do this well, it is important to know how the market will behave in the future and the key trends to note. Some of these trends may be specific to the industries, whereas some others may be related to the specific products, regions, or markets. Some other trends can be categorized as megatrends which were also there before COVID-19 and still exist. Some examples of these big-time trends include climatic changes and growth in the global population etc.
However, there are many unique trends that COVID-19 put into motion and accelerated significantly as the pandemic lasted. For example, the popularity of B2B e-com had largely increased during the time of the pandemic. However, it existed even before that time. Further in this article, we will discuss some of the post-covid business strategies which should be a part of all business planning to survive and thrive in the coming years.
Post-covid business trends
Growing digitalization
One of the most obvious and leading trends of this time is the scope of further digitalization of all fields. This trend has been clearly going on this way for the last couple of decades, but the effect of the pandemic has expedited it. To see this right, we can look at the annual Hype Cycle of Gartner on Emerging Technologies. Among the 30 top technology trends they listed in the 2020 version, only a handful are there which are not related to IT.
However, this is not the same anymore. In various ways, 2020 marked a big change in how digitalization had impacted many traditional businesses too. When people were at home during the Covid lockdowns and working from there, we used many applications to stay connected like Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, etc. There were many e-learning and e-experiences tools also used since the onset of the pandemic. All these owe to the growing technologies of big data, AI, machine learning, and so on.
As the Gartner study unveils the strategic business predictions for 2022 and beyond, all these trends will continue to evolve and influence human lives, both in personal and work lives. As the report predicts, by the year 2025, about 40% of the conventional physical-experience-related businesses may improve their results and start to outperform the competitors by leveraging paid virtual. About 75% of the workplace conversations will be analyzed based on the records by discovering the risks or organizational values.
While these are examples of some predictions based on the recent changes and current rate of growth of technologies and practices, all these points to the continuous development of the business trends which had been set in motion during the times of Covid-19. So, it is always safe to say that all businesses should embrace various modes of digitalization appropriate to them as a success strategy. For digitization and to adopt modern technologies, enterprises need to build a very strong and clean database. RemoteDBA.com offers many customized packages in remote database administration for businesses of all scales.
Responsible business
Another concept which we are witnessing over the last few years is that enterprises now increasingly consider responsibility as transparency and sustainability in business. This is a consumer-centric and environment-centric approach. The times when businesseswere only focused on making blind profit and maximization of shareholder value are getting over. In fact, it is true that many such companies still exist, and they may also prosper. But this mindset had largely changed, and it may pave the way to a new culture in running businesses.
A real-time example for the same is the “Millionaires against Pitchforks.” This is a consortium of about 100 millionaires from across the globe who released a letter during the World Economic Forum in 2020 by requesting the governments to mandate them to pay more taxes to balance the inequality challenges. There are also many other such trends and initiatives towards responsible business as the automobile industry’s switch to electric vehicles and the energy sector companies Like Shell shifting to introduce more sustainable energy forms etc. Even though these are anecdotal examples to quote, we may see the need for businesses to embrace more responsible and sustainable ways to run their functions to strive.
Systematic resilience
Before the era of a global pandemic, only very few organizations started to systematically think about resilience. The prime importance they gave was to the efficiency of running a business in various forms such as cutting down costs, lean administration, maximizing profits, ensuring stable growth, etc. While these approaches had led to business organizations’ prospering, they had also led to building organizations that were fragile to doom during the Covid-19 times.
As we summarize in the article, the paradigm of efficiency is routed in the entrepreneurs thinking about the business. It is conventionally embedded that way so deeply that many do not even consciously recognize this paradigm. However, it is a paradigm and not an objective truth that businesses must be only about efficiency.
The two above business trends we discussed can be seen as actual trends with supporting data already there in place. However, considering the resilience, we are still so early to identify it as an actual business trend in rolling. There are evidently more discussions about resilience nowadays. As a real-time example, we can point out the trending topics of McKinsey now. However, we need to wait and see whether the focus on resilience exists even after the pandemic. It is also possible that the discussions about resilience may be seized post-pandemic, and businesses may fully focus back on efficiency itself.
So, in short, there are many paradigm shifts in the way how we run business in the post-covid era. For all existing businesses and those who are coming in new, it is essential to understand these shifts and the importance of them being compliant with these in the context of their industry and business model.
There are lines outside stores, yet they are frequently due to physical-removing prerequisites. Theaters are dim. Designs are in storage rooms rather than in plain view. If the Musée du Louver were open, the absence of travelers may even set out the freedom for an unhindered perspective on the Mona Lisa. In these and alternate ways, buyers have pulled back.
As purchaser certainty returns, so will spending, with “vengeance shopping” moving throughout areas as repressed interest is released. That has been the experience of all past monetary slumps. One contrast, in any case, is that administrations have been especially hard hit this time. The bob back will accordingly possible underline those organizations, especially the ones that have a shared component, like eateries and amusement scenes.
It is not necessarily the case that customers will act consistently. McKinsey’s latest purchaser review, distributed in late October, tracked down that nations with more seasoned socioeconomics, like France, Italy, and Japan, are less hopeful than are those with more youthful populaces, like India and Indonesia. China was a special case—it has a more seasoned populace yet is obviously hopeful.