5 Cs to drive your business forward post-COVID

There are five key areas that will form the basis of an effective strategy to deliver the recovery that most businesses are desperately hoping to achieve post-COVID.

Cash

Making sure there is enough cash within the business to pay the bills is vital now more than ever. Uncertainty remains so forecasting the cash required to keep the wheels turning is critical. You can have the most profitable business in the world but if you can’t pay the bills you will not be In business for very long. Make sure that you are putting cash into reserves for unexpected emergencies as nobody would ever want to be caught out by a crisis such as Covid in the future.

Costs

Businesses must review every line of cost from production to overheads. The goal has to be to convert as many of the costs of the business to variable rather than fixed. Do you still need all of your office space? Can you outsource non core services such as accounting, HR, Marketing? Can you introduce commission structures to reduce basic salaries for your team?

Control

Access to the right information proved critical to businesses looking to access financial support during the crisis. Business owners must make decisions based on accurate up to date information rather than estimates and instinct. The last few years has witnessed huge developments in systems that enable smaller businesses to forecast, manage their information, reach their customers and generally be informed as to what is going on. Now is the time to implement these systems to make sure that the management team are managing the business and it is not the other way round.

Communication

This has now been added as we have seen the importance of communication both internally and externally. Keeping your team informed of what is going on, why decisions have been made and where you are going has been, and will remain critical to future success. In addition external communication whether digitally, through more traditional means or via personal meetings is vital so that external stakeholders know that you are open for business and what you have planned.

Customers

Without your customers you don’t have a business! It is time to focus on the customer journey and experience. If your existing customers are not getting what they need from you they will look somewhere else. Understand their needs, identify how you are working with them and constantly look to make improvements. Remember it is easier to build on existing relationships than it is to win new ones. Also focus on where your product or service can be stretched to build new customers. During the crisis many businesses went from a bricks and mortar to an online