The emergence of a virus has quickly changed the way we live our lives and disrupted the global economy. Everybody is building a quick understanding about what the virus is capable of, what the potential remedies are and how we can respond to it as individuals, companies, cities and countries. The most solid realization is that we need to react to this fast-changing world, otherwise, our firms, institutions will suffer permanent loses.
We are observing three questions that business leaders are trying to find answers to:
Where can I find fact-based analysis so that I can draw rational conclusions, make assumptions and take decisions?
How long and how deep will the crisis continue in the short term from a lockdown perspective and in the medium term from a recovery perspective?
How can I protect my people while thinking about going back to normal? How will I keep on protecting my people and my eco-system (suppliers, customers) during the new normal?
As Dogma Alares, we developed a War Room approach to help our clients on how to respond to the crisis. Our approach is the focus of another Medium article. Today, I would like to focus the attention of executives to the three urgent, must-do actions:
Action A. Define the 9 operational tasks and put them in place to secure your people when going back to the new normal. E.g. Task 2: Find a secure and fast diagnostic capability. Each of these 9 tasks is hard to implement and monitor but is key to keep your people and operations sustainable. What if you skip step A: Companies will find themselves in a constant firefighting mode with the evolving impacts of the disease and never be able to focus on preparing for future, i.e. new normal.
Action B. Develop a solid information base to understand the impacts of the disease on people and healthcare systems, impact of policy decisions on the economy and sectors and geographies your firms are participating in. Such as:
A Covid Dashboard- in addition to your normal performance dashboards,
A quantitative propagation model that shows how deep and long the disease will spread at the locations your firms are operating at,
A diverse and weekly functioning Advisory Board, composed of expert doctors, pharma professionals, economists, psychologists and more- depending on the nature of your business.
What if you skip step B: Companies will find themselves under the bombardment of positively and negatively commented information. The inputs will usually be global level and not specific to your business, customer base and operating geographies. Often, the data flow will be ex-post and crucial leading indicators will be missing.
Action C. Set up an isolated (in terms of time and capability) and powerful (in terms of making decisions) Crisis Management Team and focus their attention on three areas; supply chain, customers and financials. This crisis is unique because it is causing fundamental changes in supply chains (procurement to delivery), making some of our customers financially weak and putting pressure on payment terms, increasing cost of financing and sometimes not accessible etc. This means we may need to rewrite some of our contracts, negotiate prices, change some of our processes and organizational structures and evaluate financing options. What if we skip step C: Companies will find themselves not be able to respond to fast changes in the marketplace; old products not sold, market share losses as new products/ services attract our old customers, some suppliers not there anymore, logistics costs that are higher, some customers not paying, banks not providing credit line like they used to.
All the above come to a single, hard to replicate capability; ability to see the impact of operational and business scenarios on the financial health of the firm against the uncertain climate of this crisis. As Dogma Alares, we can help you set this capability up with our:
Tested propagation model that works at geographic level,
Already developed 9 operational actions to secure your people,
Advisory Board with experts from different disciplines; e.g. professors in statistics, medicine, operations research and economics, pharma professionals, retail and logistics firms top management based in Boston, London, Brussels, Paris and Istanbul.
Diverse project team, as the core of your Crisis Management Team, that understands strategy, finance, operations, technology and analytics.
All the above are delivered to you at a quality level that London’s, New York’s consulting firms, investment bank houses and PE houses would need. Thanks to cooperation with our sister firm, Alares London, that specializes in M&A advisory.