As businesses buckle up to battle the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, corporate leaders need solid business safeguards and strategies to plan for recovery. The shadow of the ongoing pandemic still looms large over the world economy.

When the then-unknown tiny little virus crossed Singapore’s borders in late December 2019, no expert could have anticipated its impact on Singapore’s economy. Statistics tell us that Singapore faced its worst economic recession in 2020 due to Covid-19. With restrictions on social gatherings and dining-ins being gradually lifted, Singapore is progressively making its way towards economic recovery.

Despite Singapore’s unprecedented control over the Covid-19 situation, its economy has a high dependency on tourism and cross-border trade. So, global companies must build resilience if they want to survive. In order to survive the disruptions caused by the ongoing pandemic, companies and individuals need to formulate new and effective survival strategies.

We have listed some tactics you can use to safeguard your business amid the Coronavirus pandemic. As Singapore makes its way towards recovery, you need these strategies to preserve business continuity.

Covid-19 and Singapore Economy: A Recap

The current health crisis has left an enduring impact on Singapore’s economy. While some industries faced minor shocks, others got crushed under the full-blown force of Covid-19. The industries that suffered most during this crisis are those dependent mostly on tourism and international travel. Enterprises relying on consumer interaction—mostly food and retail—have also been severely affected. Decrease in domestic consumption amid Covid-19 restrictions badly influenced the business continuity of these sectors.

At the same time, factors like a drop in external demand and supply chain disruption left significant aftereffects on manufacturing and wholesale industries. Furthermore, a recession in the domestic economy created a negative spillover which disrupted sectors like real estate and construction. But not everything is doom and gloom, as Singapore saw a record-breaking rise in online sales and purchase demand.

• According to the survey conducted in November 2020, over 63% of companies in Singapore suffered from the Covid-19 crisis.
• In 2020, Singapore faced its worst economic recession.

 

Five Ways to Safeguard Your Business During Covid-19

1. Prioritize Health and Safety

Ensuring the safety of your employees should be your topmost concern during these times. The first thing you can do is make flexible working arrangements, so your employees are able to work safely from their homes. Reallocate sources and reorganize teams to establish a safe working environment. Organizations that cannot adopt the work-from-setup and need employees on-site should practice safety measures such as social distancing, sanitisers, plexiglass shields, masks, etc.

2. Prepare A Solid Communication Plan

You should have an optimized communication channel during the crisis. Your communication system must target:

• Suppliers
• Customers
• Employees

Schedule regular updates, create concise messages and use optimized technologies to deliver those messages. You can also hire someone to communicate important messages digitally to the parties mentioned above.

3. Rethink Your Business Plan

In order to recover, businesses need to determine the impact of Covid-19 on their business plans and budgets. You need to conduct an assessment on financial plans by stress-testing them for different scenarios.

This is important to evaluate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on financial performance and understand how long this impact could last.

If the impact is long-lasting, you should rethink your budget and business plan and make them more agile. Where the business has suffered a significant negative impact, companies should consider minimum operating requirements. If your business has suffered during the crisis, you may also be facing the issue of urgent capital demand to maintain business continuity.

Based on the results of your business plan assessment, you may need to look at options like:

• Debt refinancing
• Near-term capital raising
• Loan from banks
• Credit support from investors
• Policy support from the government

Moreover, you may need to review your operating costs and temporarily cut down some of your expenses.

4. Digitalize Your Business Operations

During the Covid-19 crisis, the world has seen a historic implementation of digitalization. Research suggests that we have leapt 5 years in digital adoption in a matter of just 8 weeks after the emergence of Covid-19.

This sudden outbreak of digitalization led organizations to completely restructure their business strategies and move to remote working setups. Customers started preferring digital engagement, and companies had to adapt to this growing change. Some of the challenges faced by companies during this global crisis are sustaining productivity through digital means as well as reimagining business strategies to make room for new opportunities through digitalizing.

Seeing digitalization as part of the cultural shift and a catalyst to enhance business models is important to stay relevant in the business world today

5. Build Systemic Resilience Through Cooperation

The Covid-19 crisis made us all realize how interconnected our world is today. The Coronavirus pandemic is a visceral reminder of how collaboration between stakeholders is crucial to building systemic resilience despite the economic setback. In order to successfully build resilience, the fabric of trust must be firmly woven across all relevant stakeholders. Be it trust between supply chain managers or between the business owners, it is essential to optimize different working operations.

 

What’s Next?

The world is still recovering from the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Although the health and safety risks still haven’t subsided, businesses around the world are dealing with the situation, and economies are gradually opening.

While it is difficult to tell what is next, businesses can see these past few months as economic lessons and learn to cope with severe economic shocks. Companies should focus on building a system that can fight the crisis while simultaneously increasing productivity through digitalization and collaboration.

Once this situation is alleviated, companies should evaluate how well they tackled the situation and then analyze methods to become more robust and resilient in the future.

To make it easier, contact Mi2u Business Support and stay stress-free to survive the pandemic.