Daily activities and businesses throughout the world were largely affected by this Pandemic especially in Malaysia whereby we have had our Movement Control Order that prohibits us from travelling interstate, working in non-essential places and so on.
Some businesses had been said to have lost in a reported region of up to 70% and above total earnings for the year 2020. These would include airlines, hotels, gaming and horse-races. Traditional businesses and small-medium enterprises find it hard to cope with bank loans to serve and the askance for them to be more agile in running their businesses.
Those that did well during this time of crisis are medical suppliers such as mask-makers, rubber gloves and those related to essential goods including food takeaways and animal feed.
It is my understanding that there are three things to look urgently into. They are:-
1) Human Resources;
2) Expenses relating to Certifications;
3) IT infrastructure and marketing.
Human Resources
Salary often forms a large part of operations. A note of caution should be given on retention of staff and not just removing staff for the sake of reducing costs. Your staff represents your business image and the carry-on of your business in good times and in bad times. Ideally, it will be good to sit down with the HR and come to an agreement with the staff to reduce their salary up to an acceptable level until businesses return back to normal, when possible.
Expenses relating to Certifications
Businesses that rely on certifications including quality management, trading, import and export should view the overall objective of whether certificates are needed. In some cases, to obtain the certification, improvements must be made to fulfill the criteria of the certification and these may cost a lot of money. Make sure not only to compute the costs of consultants and certifications but also the cost of improvements and meeting the requirements of certifications.
IT infrastructure and marketing
At this time, companies will look to follow their neighbours by spending into IT infrastructure and doing a lot of marketing and promotion of the businesses. However, this solution may not work well as there are many competitors in the market and they have invested much earlier than you into their businesses. One of the good options to consider is to find a business partner to work with on workable IT solution with co-branding. This will reduce the risk of failing in spending monies into IT infrastructure and marketing.
Should you have any questions, please email to contactus@miens360.com
Thank you and stay safe.
