The Corona Virus aka COVID-19 has spread across the world, and its humanitarian impact has grown, where in the Demand and Supply curves have not been stable and the retailers have been putting in a lot of Efforts while trying to keep up with the demand from the consumers. There are many challenges that have arisen in the Manufacturing and Retail supply chain networks as the Pandemic has far reaching impact on the health of the Employees and have created havoc in the lives and economic situation of the Global countries. 

Out of the necessity, the administration and Management have prioritized their People, customers and Suppliers, addressing the disruption of the supply chain networks, and the new alignment of their businesses with upcoming and changing Demands, identifying the new Growth paths, and priorly, stabilizing their revenues.

Then the attention goes into the period of huge unpredictability, and into an economic market with a lot of competition and threats as well as new opportunities, which is the NEW NORMAL, the era of shifting norms of culture, society and behaviours, that aligns to the increased demand for responsible business practices, and renewal in the brand’s purpose and vision.

As the business leaders face the urgency and difficulties in re-opening their businesses, a lack of certainty has to be fought with new innovations in the business practices and the products or services being offered, or the innovation of the strategies. This throws out opportunities for the companies to develop the best of their core competencies and make investments to be more digitalized and data-driven. It shows out the importance of the organizations to be more flexible, agile, cost-variable, and automated; something that the organizations and the businesses should have invested way back.

Impact on the Consumers:

The Pandemic situation has made it important for businesses to connect with the changing habits of the customers. The companies have been forced to re-evaluate on how the contact centres are leveraged, how the customer experiences are delivered by the employees, and the importance of the digital platforms to be prepared to deliver the maximized experience and support in the business continuity throughout the crisis and after.

The experiences of the people have been changed by the Pandemic, as a result changing our behavioral patterns and attitudes. The Pandemic situations have completely changed the process and the goods that the consumers buy, accelerating a lot of changes in the Consumer market. While the pandemic has created an uncertainty of the normalcy in the situations, the lock down and shut down of the business has ensured that the consumers buy and stock up their purchases and essential goods and hold up for the savings in order to save. Once the immediate threat of the virus is gone, the businesses need to consider the impact of these situations and changes on the way of designing, communications and the experiences to be built and run that customers need.

With the new behavioural patterns, the businesses have an opportunity to use the digital platforms and create offers, expand the existing offers and create new lines of services, like the examples of Contact-less deliveries, Pick-up services, Cost-saving sales, and many more. This act will put pressure on the organizations, to re-design their business digital strategies, to capture new opportunities and digital segments of the customers.

Impact on the Employees:

All the businesses globally have experienced the disruption of the workforce. Many companies are still determining how the organizations can enable the work in the long and short-term. The workforces have been trying to function as smoothly as they can, even while struggling with the situations that the pandemic has created in their lives.

HRs across different organizations have been trying to overcome the challenges thrown by the pandemic by helping People and the organizations navigate the massive workforce shifts, protecting and empowering the employees, serving and delivering to the customer requirements and establishing a certain level of business continuity. 

They are developing the Agile strategies for the workforce, to keep it economically viable for the organization and help their employees survive financially in the pandemic crisis. Everyone in the community, people and organizations are on the look-out for the plans that serves the exact purpose as the world evolves with several economic, environmental and health changes. All parts of the Societal network, Business organizations, Government, NGOs and the citizens play the critical roles to establish a human-centered and systems minded approach for a better workforce resilience.

Impact on the Business Operations:

Markets are going off-balance due to the loss of structure in the demand and supply curves due to pandemic crisis situation. There are fundamental changes in the consumer behaviors, supply chains and market routes. Responding to the pandemic situations has required all the leaders to adopt the agile ways of working and value chain transformation to overcome the uncertainty of the situations.

It is important for the organizations to shift from the Top-Down decision making, empowering the teams, guided by purpose, driven by data, tech-powered and digitally enabled by cloud to reach for a faster market. It requires enabling Plug and play office environment which is capable of a dynamic self-managing and adaptable workforce. 

And now, the Supply chain is extremely critical and requires the companies to develop a rapid response system to address the current disruptions and re-shape the supply chain network by increasing both Resilience and Responsibility in the workforce throughout the organization.

Impact on Finance:

In the wake call of the crisis due to the COVI-19 pandemic, the management has to act quickly to regain the balance of risk and liquidity to optimize the organization’s resilience. The viability, both current and future, depends on the swift actions including the short-term actions for the stable and strategic moves that is going to create a new future for the company and in-turn the Industry overall.

To address the short-term liquidity challenges, it is important that immediate actions be called for and also to solve the costs and profitability and generate the funding for investing into the opportunities. For the companies facing decreased sales and increased costs, interventions for adaptations might require investments in key technologies, process and people. Liquidity now, has become a point of survival for many organizations.