How Software Companies Are Preparing for the Post-Crisis Future

In this blog post, we will delve into the strategies and initiatives undertaken by software companies as they gear up for the new normal. From embracing remote work to accelerating digitalization efforts, these companies have been quick to recognize the importance of agility and resilience in the face of adversity.

We will explore the key trends, tools, and approaches that software companies are employing to stay ahead in a world that is evolving at an unprecedented pace.

Business leaders today are rightly focused on the significant business continuity challenges posed by COVID-19. First and foremost, they need to ensure that employees are as safe as possible, securing financial sustainability, assessing the resilience of supply chains, and reinforcing central systems to support unprecedented levels of remote working and online trading while withstanding an upsurge in cyber-attacks. 

Their business models and dealing processes meant that they were ready to pivot sooner or accelerate changes already underway. The companies that lack a robust digital backbone or a web presence have struggled, as have those exposed to leading street retail, transportation, energy, and tourism sectors.

The companies with no social media presence have struggled as well because of these hard and desperate while everyone is sitting at home and working from and all the purchasing and buying is also done online. To have a good social media presence is a necessity these days.

Reintroduce yourself and your people to your customers

During the crisis, most companies will inadvertently disappoint a number of their most vital customers. Some will still love your company, within the words of Billy Joel, "Just the Way you're." Others, within the words of David Bowie, will demand "Changes."

Some will appreciate your messages and actions over the last several weeks, feeling you've shown you're "True Colors," as Cyndi Lauper sings. Others will feel your propositions are tone-deaf to a transformed society.

While personal journeys and relationships with individual companies will differ, the pandemic will end in some changes. In several industries, when consumer behaviours change, there's no going back. The organizations that acknowledge and steel one against these shifts are going to be during a better position to survive 

So, when this is often everywhere, you and your customers will have some catching up to try to. It'll take time. You'll get to throw away old assumptions: The raw customer needs, which will define your industry, could also be dramatically different. You'll get to avoid any discussions about the "average customer": Insights will emerge by market, by category, and by cohort.

To uncover these insights, leading companies won't only conduct new marketing research. They're going to talk directly with their most precious customers. Supported those conversations, they'll make some tough decisions about customers' needs.

Don't expect to perfectly predict what they need the primary time around. It's a learning journey: Be resilient and adapt as you go, responding to your customers' evolving needs. And watch out for new entrants that would leapfrog you to satisfy those needs faster and better. 

Embrace the cultural and behavioural shifts that COVID-19 introduced

For many, the worldwide pandemic exposed weaknesses and rendered much traditional strength irrelevant. Technology has been the common denominator for many organizations' resilience amid the crisis. It's also helped drive significant cultural shifts like people performing from home and connecting with colleagues via video-conferencing platforms and collaboration tools.

 Organizations have a valuable opportunity to maximize the many behavioral and cultural shifts of the past few weeks to carry across into a non-COVID world. This might mean developing Omni-channel business models that combine digital and face-to-face offerings.

The move to shift infrastructure from traditional data centres to the cloud, or a mixture of on-premises and cloud computing, shows signs of acceleration. Many businesses are already rethinking how to introduce greater virtualization into many aspects of the business, like learning, while also planning for much higher levels of remote working than before, with the knock-on impact on the critical estate and carbon footprint of the business.

Ask challenging questions on your strategy and organization

The best CEOs see the coronavirus crisis as a rehearsal for a replacement normal: a world of global climate change, accelerated digital disruption, radical shifts in political alignments, and more. They know they can't return to the way they were before Covid-19. Instead, businesses must retool to emerge more substantial and more resilient than before. To urge there, CEOs should address four crucial strategic questions.

What is our new definition of "risk management"?

A lot went wrong here. But if we break down the matter, we will solve it correctly. Risk management requires three things:

1. Prediction: Have we identified the proper scenarios and assigned the proper probabilities?
2. Adaptation: Are there built-in checkpoints so we will adapt because the scenarios and probabilities change?
3. Resilience: Is our decision-making process resilient to unanticipated shocks? 

Running future-back scenarios for your company and your industry could change your business forever (and you should roll in the hay now). But even with the simplest prediction models, you can't predict thanks to a no-risk world. This suggests you want to become much more adaptable.

During this crisis, we've seen founder-led organizations retool during days or weeks, because of highly adaptable teams. We've also seen large incumbents, with vast prediction capabilities; seem paralyzed because the virus spreads. These organizations can improve their agility and speed by learning what worked and didn't beat the past few weeks.

Most firms also can become more resilient by reflecting on the Covid-19 outbreak. Organizations have global supply chains supported low costs and just-in-time production.

Yet they found themselves without supplies. Moving forward, leaders can ask: "Which parts of the worth chain can we manage for costs? Which can we manage for redundancy?" And let's confirm to urge "redundancy" right next time too.

Many companies had outsourced call centers across multiple countries to ensure redundancy. Yet they found themselves without support when employees didn't have access to laptops or broadband reception. Multinational redundancy didn't survive one day of multinational lockdown.