As we all know, disruption is a great instigator of change, and the world has never seen a disruption to business quite as significant as the current coronavirus crisis. As businesses resume operations, going back to a new normal will not be enough.
To learn from the current situation, businesses must now operate in a way that ensures they can respond immediately and seamlessly to the next crisis that seems to be inevitable. As a whole, our economy was not prepared for this, but we must be prepared for the next one.
A large part of this preparation will be the new policies and processes that business-owners will need to adopt to scale their business in a post-COVID economy, and ensure they are alert and aware of each element of their business operations.
Traditional post-crisis recovery models allocate few resources to things like information-sharing and expansion, but in this situation, they definitely should. To be successful in a post-COVID economy, businesses will need to scale operations to focus on shifting consumer demands, and a cloud-based ERP application is the most effective and efficient driver.
ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning systems integrate a business’s inventory management, ordering system, accounting, personnel files and resource allotment into a single source of truth – one place that stakeholders can go to access all the information they need about what’s happening in their company, where there challenges may lie and any pending resource shortages.
Cloud-based ERP solutions provide complete transparency into how a company is performing, what is going on behind the scenes, identify new opportunities and risks, and provides notifications of resources that are needed. This happens automatically, all day, every day. Businesses with cloud-based ERP also enjoy data and insights that help them learn from any mistakes that may have happened, manage their recovery and plan for the future.
Imagine if you were a sanitizer business with at the beginning of this coronavirus outbreak. Imagine if you had systems in place to notify you as soon as supplies got low. Imagine how things could have been different. The right ERP solution could be exactly what was missing.