The 5 Critical Steps to Corona-proofing your company

The coronavirus has held the world captive. Businesses have shut down, social distancing is ‘a thing’ and millions of people are asked to quarantine themselves for the greater good.

But a few weeks or months from now, do you expect everything will go back to normal? Do businesses owners plan to run their companies the same way they did before?

I don’t think so…

Before the coronavirus, technology was already adding plenty of value to our lives. E-commerce allowed people to order online instead of going into stores, social platforms allowed people to connect in the digital world, and working from home was a perk enabled by tools like remote desktop and cloud-services.

In these weeks however, those technologies that were once ‘niceties’ and ‘perks’ have elevated their status to requirements. The only companies thriving under these conditions are the ones who’ve already made the digital shift in their business models.

The 5 Critical Steps to Corona-proofing your company

If pain is a powerful teacher, then this coronavirus is the equivalent of a professor at Harvard Law.

If you’re sitting at home thinking about how to ‘Corona-Proof’ your business when things settle down, I encourage you to borrow Hackett’s Technology Transformation Model. Here are the 5 paths to focus your digital transformation efforts on:

1. Shift to the Cloud. Use Google for Business, Microsoft 365, or other cloud based technologies so you don’t need to be in the office to get work done.
2. Digitize your products or services. Find a way to shift your business model to the cloud. Subscription services, e-commerce websites and Online training are just some of the ways businesses can provide value digitally.
3. Find software to help automate your business processes. This could be as complex as a business management tool (ERP) or as simple as a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically share new blogs to LinkedIn and Facebook. New technologies are popping up every day to make our lives easier. I’ve curated some of my favorite business software here.
4. Integrate your software with your partners and customers. Data is the new currency. If you’re a distributor, maybe this means enabling your vendors to manage their own products in your system. If you’re a car manufacturer, this might mean connecting to repair shops so you get real time updates about service issues related to your cars.
5. Market digitally. Once you’ve shifted your customer’s eyes to the digital world, you’ll also need to shift your marketing there too. There are many unique and fun ways to put your message in front of your customers.

In my upcoming book, Who Moved My Mouse, there are a number of specific examples of each of these transformations. You can pre-register for the book here.

You’re also welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like to understand what digital transformation would look like for your company specifically.

Want an Infochart of the Hackett Technology Transformation Model? You can download it here.