Businesses need to plan over the “now”, “next” and “beyond” time horizons to balance addressing the immediate and short-term issues with longer-term strategic priorities.
Transform and transact
How a business harnesses transformation and transactions to reposition itself for the future is vital.
Businesses have had to leverage technology to enable new ways of working and delivering their services during the pandemic, underscoring the importance of digital in boosting agility and competitiveness. As companies look to reshape their business, improve productivity or reduce capacity, digital transformation is a key enabler.
Where digital capabilities are lacking to drive growth, M&As could be an accelerator. Valuations have dipped in recent uncertain times, making it opportune to consider M&As for consolidation, or for traditional incumbents to acquire distressed players or underfunded companies that have good technology products and capabilities.
Invariably, there will be execution challenges and companies must be mindful of them. For one, companies must be clear of their long-term strategic goals and ensure alignment across business units on the priorities, including where to play and how to win. Even when that is achieved, a lack of funding and internal capabilities will limit even the best plans on paper.
Clearly, the issues to be managed are complex and evolving, as well as span the entire enterprise. To help provide businesses with structure amid the chaos, EY teams have developed a COVID-19 Enterprise Resilience Framework, identifying nine key areas that businesses must address to build resilience in the “now”, “next” and “beyond”.
Using the framework helps to pave the way toward clarity on what needs to be done. No doubt, securing future growth may come with a price. But let growth not be the price you pay for inertia or fear of the unknown.
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled many companies to respond with new ways of doing business and heightens the need for digitalization and transformation. Some industries are likely to fare better than others and expected to emerge from the crisis in one of four states: strong, transformed, reshaped or uncertain.
Notwithstanding the varying impact across industries, businesses need to plan over the “now”, “next” and “beyond” time horizons to balance addressing the immediate and short-term issues with longer-term strategic priorities.