A future lesson of history

Deon Mbaile

While the Covid-19 crisis is not a welcome shock to the system, it is accelerating the needed change in the way of doing business and for companies to remain relevant.

Abrupt as it was, companies had to change the way they operate with speed and agility. Technology now bridges the gap between employees working from home, companies and customers during the lockdown period.

As much as some industries like in the technology and telesales space may find the transition natural, travel and tourism does not share the same sentiment.

Werner de Bruin, Governance, Risk & Internal Audit Leader at PwC South Africa revealed that a company’s leadership often has mixed levels of confidence about their organisation’s business interruption and continuity management capabilities. This lack of clarity amplifies when you move beyond company walls and examine interruption risk among the vendors who provide goods and services for the organisation’s critical functions.

PwC’s Global Crisis Centre also cautioned that many businesses have only a small window of opportunity to plan for what is ahead. Many globally integrated companies with just-in-time operations had only a few weeks supply of goods already in transit when the epidemic hit, enough to provide just a short-term buffer.

From a business resilience perspective, having a clearly defined plan in place to deal with such an unforeseen crisis is a critical component to protecting the ongoing success and viability of a business. When a crisis hits, business as usual ceases.

Organisations with poor liquidity and those on the brink of bankruptcy may not recover after the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the humanitarian crisis caused by this pandemic many organisations’ strategic direction and corporate governance is challenged in terms of readiness to transition from the traditional way of doing business to the utilisation of artificial intelligence, however, future-orientated companies are presented with an opportunity of leverage into the 4IR era.

In conclusion, the economic landscape is unlikely to remain the same after the coronavirus pandemic, some companies will come back bleeding and limping, some stronger than before, and some may never see the dawn again.

It is in the onus of business leaders, to re-evaluate their strategic direction and objectives against the reality unfolding.