During these weeks we have seen how restaurants and small food businesses have been converted to serve their food at home, or that neighborhood stores began to sell their products or offer their services online. Its objective has been to maintain the activity in some way so as not to disappear during the state of alarm.
These changes in business strategy have always been essential for companies to grow or stay afloat. “Organizations must assume changes when they perceive a change in market trend or a loss of competitiveness,” explains Jordi Damià, founder of Setesca, a technology consultancy.
“For a business model to work, it has to offer a value proposition and have the customer at the center of its activity. In the end, brands are irrelevant, the important thing is what is behind them. An idea that has become clear after the thousands of solidarity initiatives that many companies have carried out, making their resources available to others”, explains Miguel Macías, professor at the IEBS school and author of The way to innovate (Planet). “Changes don’t always have to be big. Sometimes, small adjustments are enough”, advises Macías.
This is the case of hundreds of companies from different sectors that have modified their activity to produce essential products such as respirators or protective equipment. One of them has been Captain Denim, a manufacturer of sustainable jeans, which stopped its production of garments to make cotton masks, which are so necessary at this time.
Other companies, unable to continue their normal activity due to the state of alarm, have decided to offer services through the Internet. This is the case of Nannyfy, a startup that until now facilitated the hiring of nannies at home. With the impossibility of continuing with the business, they converted their platform into a space for live video call activities with babysitters assigned based on their experience and specialization.
Listens the story of Claudia, from Nannyfy, on the Banco Sabadell podcast
Apart from these conjunctural changes, the model should not be the result of an opportunity, but of a change in consumption that lasts over time. Jordi Damià advises that companies review their strategy at least once a year. To do this, it is important to pay attention to the direction the market is taking, promote digitization and the online sales channel, if the business allows it, and take care of talent.
Find out what works and what doesn’t
It is important for the entrepreneur to find out what transformations are taking place in the market, in the competition and in the preferences of the public in order to redirect production and activity. To do this, Miguel Macías calculates that it would be necessary to invest around 20% of the resources in finding out the new trends.
A business plan must be designed that analyzes what can be done with the resources that are available: how it could be diversified, what other markets could be reached or what other products could be sold or manufactured with what one knows how to do .
Adapting the offer to a new consumption model is the great challenge: “For example, today it is difficult to imagine 100,000 people in a soccer field or a full theater, so sports and entertainment companies must make changes immediately. In fact, some dedicated to the theater are considering selling their activity via streaming to win back the customer”, says Damiá.
In this context, implementing methods such as Lean to innovate and test while reducing costs is key. In addition, it is important to bet more than ever on attracting, developing and, above all, retaining talent. “Knowing how to manage talent is essential,” says Eva Álvarez, a partner at the Misstake creative school consultancy. Investing in talent provides stability to the business. Álvarez also highlights the role of creativity: “Professionals who are guided by it have a greater capacity to adapt, find the opportunity to change, are more open-minded and get new ideas to flow to the rest of the team.”
Digitization level
“The life cycle of a business that does not adapt to changes has a maximum validity of five years. A digital meteorite that will require us to move will always end up falling, ”says Jaime Villanueva, general director of Products and Solutions at Econocom, a group that helps organizations in their digital transformation.
The leap into the digital world is one of the pending tasks for Spanish companies, according to the III Study on the state of digitization of Spanish companies and public administrations, carried out by the Vodafone Company Observatory. It is a process that requires investment and time, which is why Villanueva advises companies to set short- and medium-term goals, since their impact can be better measured. “A true digital transformation goes beyond making sporadic investments in digital media, having a presence on social networks and creating or renewing the website; a true digital transformation implies a profound renewal of the corporate culture”, affirms Sergi Bea, Director of the Business and SME Segment Management at Banco Sabadell.
The advantages of undertaking a digital strategy are summarized in:
- Quick information on commercial actions to correct or adapt them.
- Productivity increase.
- Reputation Increase online.
- Direct communication with clients.
- New opportunities for digital commerce.
Canal ‘online’
In the current situation, many companies have been aware of the loss of competitiveness of the traditional channel and have opted for online sales. To sell online, however, you need a different infrastructure that allows online payment and home delivery. Although it seems that this type of sale is exclusive to large companies, SMEs can also access it. “Traditional commerce was already beginning to consider change, but this crisis has made it plunge into it, quickly and with few tools,” says Miguel Macías. This lack of instruments to open a digital sales channel can be made up for through collaboration between SMEs. “Create marketplaces premises that facilitate payment methods, order reception or product distribution can be the solution”, points out Macías. The Seville Market is one of these initiatives. It is a web page created by four professionals so that small shops throughout the province of Seville can continue selling while they remain closed or to supply older people who cannot move.