The coronavirus pandemic has caused global panic, affecting businesses and already struggling small businesses. The last few months for small business owners have been a continuous juggling act. Recovery is on the way; however, this might take longer than anticipated. It has become frustrating, from trying to access government relief funds to keeping both sales & employees healthy, to learning new protocols in a world under a cloud of a pandemic.

Therefore the need to show resilience and adapt is critical. We have decided to put together four tips to help you and your small business adapt in a post COVID world.

1. Find a silver lining.

As an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you face challenges every day in keeping your businesses alive, from financing, staffing to marketing and sales; however, one thing that entrepreneurs are known for is their risk appetite and resilience. Otherwise, you will not venture out to start a business.
As much as the COVID pandemic came with its challenges, you have to find the silver lining which will help you pivot and look at things from a different perspective. Find one thing in your business that worked during the lockdown and still working, use that as the start point with which every other thing will grow out from. Not to sound too cliché, but this is the time you have to show your resilience. Resilience is like a muscle; the more you exercise strength, the more you go through challenges, defeat them and come out stronger.

2. Grow with Technology

We can agree that COVID brought us closer to technology and has forced us to find ways to use technology in solving our everyday problems. As a small business owner, you also should see technology as an enabler that will help you to further connect to your business operations, your market and your customers.

Technology for your business falls under three main buckets; (1) the tech you need for operations, inventory, and finance. (2) Technology for connecting, communicating with your customers, and selling your product. (3). Technology to generate awareness about your business.
Cloudenly Optima covers these three bases; it provides you with the tools you need to automate your business end to end. Optima is an integrated supply chain and accounting solution which provides you with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that enables you to communicate easily with your customers, the intelligence to know their buying journey and behaviour. It also provides you with sales and inventory tools that will help you with the reconciliation and keeping track of your business assets, monitoring your supplies and relating with your suppliers. This cloud service gives you critical business intelligence and analytics that you need to grow your business.

3. Do not become superman.

There is only one superman, and his name is Clark Kent. Entrepreneurs and leaders have plenty of strengths that support them in their day-to-day. However, it is also essential to know what you are good at and acknowledge your weakness.
Throw away the ideology of ‘fake it till you make it’ as authenticity will take you far in the long run as soon as you can afford to, hire people that can complement and provide support for you. The good thing is that you have Cloudenly HumanaR a people operations and experience management tool to help you with managing payroll, benefits, creating your organizational structure, and people administration.
Image for post

4. Build your community

Business is not war; it has been compared to a battle lots of times with the CEO as the General and the rest of staff as troops, grounding this idea on being able to take out the competition and an objective of winning at all cost. In that context, almost anything is permissible as long as winning one win.
COVID has changed a lot about this idea and the way we see competition as we have seen more competitors turn out to collaborate and invent win-win solutions.
In a post COVID world, there is more to be made through understanding your competitors finding rooms for collaboration and growing the market rather than duelling over it. It would be best if you focused your business on building a relationship with your customers and partners and continuously expanding your community of loyalists, identifying their pain points and proffering solutions to them.