Digitising your business to accommodate for the ‘new normal’

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK, the country has faced months of uncertainty - both socially and economically. Business owners, in particular, have been faced with tough decisions on how they navigate such trying times. As lockdown eases, we seem to be emerging from the worst of it and heading towards new normality. Now is the time for business leaders to think about the future. Going forward, one of the key learnings we can take from the crisis is that the ability to shift to digital processes should not be neglected.

Whether your digital process consists of having an online shop, digitising your day-to-day operations, or realising the changing demand for today’s consumer, the current landscape for all of us looks very different before lockdown began. As a level of normality resumes, those that remain stuck in a pre-COVID world, risk being left behind.

Capitalising on new opportunities

In the words of Winston Churchill, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. While we have all been keeping safe in our homes, consumer habits have transformed drastically. They now have a new perspective on what they want to purchase and how they do so. No one could have predicted how long lockdown was going to last, and the longer it goes on, the more that demand for all industries changes. 

Now the dust is settling, and we venture into this ‘new normal’, there are even more new opportunities continuously opening up, and business owners need to be ready to react. The most successful companies are those that can move fast, and the ability to be agile to extend a business model is crucial, now more than ever. 

Our habits have evolved significantly to what they were this time last year and the year before that. As a result, this means there is a whole range of opportunities that remain unexplored. These new possibilities can open up entirely new avenues for existing businesses, or even create a gap in the market for new companies.

Making the move online

As we’ve learned recently, if a business model doesn’t have at least some presence online, it won’t be able to survive. In particular, as many organisations have closed their offices throughout the pandemic, most business has been conducted online. Before the crisis and now even several months on, many companies still don’t utilise technology as well as they should do. For those with an existing business model, there is a huge opportunity to scale their business by becoming more digital. 

Moving to an online tech platform enables companies to develop their IP, which, as a result creates an overall higher valuation and improved customer experience. Not to mention, offline processes mean that when you sleep, so does your businesses. Making a move to digital can ensure that your business is always up and running at any time, ready for the next sale.  

In the last four months, 85,000 businesses launched online stores or joined online marketplaces, with many having to become innovative to survive, and this has opened up huge opportunities for the web design industry. 9.3% of pharmacies started new ways of selling online during the lockdown as well as 8,665 clothing companies adopting new online payment methods and eCommerce technologies. The demand for digital is higher today than ever before. For those that haven’t embraced this trend, they could experience some challenges going forward.

There are several ways to move to an online business. For those with a solely offline model, they can have a total rebuild of their processes, completely reworking their business model and making a move to entirely online. Or once a new opportunity has been recognised in the midst of the post-pandemic world, companies can launch a new brand which utilises their core competencies and create a tech-powered product. 

Many businesses have started becoming more digital, however still use more traditional, offline processes for some aspects of their business. Over the last few months, many of these companies have benefited from the ease of the online areas of their business. They will now look to take a hybrid approach to add new digital ways of working self-service models into the business. 

It’s important to acknowledge that digitising your business needn’t affect your productivity and by seamlessly making the transition to online, efficiency can soar. What’s more, companies can witness greater customer satisfaction as they experience the ease that is expected as a result of an increasingly digital world.

The next step is digital 

Business owners must now review their processes from documentation to payments, all the way through to their supply chain and beyond to remain agile. Just one example is those that relied heavily on hard documentation before the crisis began and were suddenly at a significant disadvantage when our capabilities were dramatically scaled back. On the other hand, those that had already made this move could continue as usual while competitors scrambled to update their processes.

The trend of moving online isn’t a new one. However, the Coronavirus crisis has rapidly accelerated this. Digitising your processes is just the beginning of businesses having a scalable model, where the possibilities to grow are endless. Now is the time to embrace the opportunities that have emerged from a difficult few months and move online. After all, it’s better to be the disruptor than the disrupted.