The Small and Medium Enterprises play a major role in most economies, especially in developing countries. The SMEs account for a majority of businesses worldwide and are significant to job creation and global economic growth. According to the World Bank, they represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of the employment rate worldwide. Experts affirm that formal SMEs contribute to 40% of Gross Domestic Product (National Income) in emerging economies.
Indeed, the outbreak of coronavirus has been a great burden to the SMEs worldwide leaving most of them in a temporary state of isolation. Covid-19 will undoubtedly have even larger, more complex and more long-lasting adverse impacts around the world, which will vary significantly among the SMEs but what then becomes the fate of these enterprises after this era?
It is no doubt that regardless of the shape of the current pandemic, we will be experiencing a “new normal” development where not only economic but also social behaviours will drastically change and this might affect the functioning of the SMEs.
In the short term, the focus of the SMEs is to stay alive through the capacity to adapt and act to the current situation. This does not only apply to sales behaviour but also implies identifying and adjusting to customer and supplier’s needs, preferences and services.
Nevertheless, the fate of the SMEs post-COVID-19 era is dependent on the current adjustments and operations of their owners. As a business owner, you should now reconsider the “O” and “T” of the SWOT analysis. These are external factors that have effects on businesses.
Following the trend in the market alongside the outbreak of COVID-19, what can be deduced to be the opportunities for businesses today? Opportunities can be viewed as external factors in your business environment that are likely to contribute to your business success.
As a business owner, you will need to ask yourself the following questions:
Is your market still growing and are people still going to buy from you during the pandemic?
Are there strategies you can implore despite the adverse effect of COVID-19 to grow your enterprise?
Are the current changes impacting your enterprise positively?
These three questions will help every business owner to discover their fate during this pandemic.
If the current pandemic is not impacting your business positively, how well has your executive board made out strategies to grow the enterprise despite the prevailing effect of COVID-19?
Several restrictions have been made as regards delivering physical services at different locations across the globe.
Adjusting to these changes will give your business another rebranding strategy. In the world today, most management teams in the SMEs are better supported by technologies that help them to standardise operations and processes. Despite the resulting effect from the current changes, do people still intend to buy from you? Let’s consider a foodstuff company as a case study. Over time, people are a bit uneasy about purchasing contaminated produce thereby putting a stop to their purchases from several companies.
Regardless of this, do you still consider your services and produce interesting to them? This will cause new strategies of produce and branding to fit in the desires of your target customers.
Furthermore, threats are external factors that you do not have control over. One might want to consider putting in place contingency plans for dealing with them if they occur. Threats are being proposed before starting any enterprise, but the outbreak of COVID-19 is overwhelming to most business owners. You might find the current pandemic a threat to your enterprise. Seeing COVID-19 as a threat to your business is not a false ideology, it becomes a plague to your business if you become submerged in it. The outbreak of COVID-19 has become a threat to so many businesses wherein some had put their operations on hold. A business in such a state is already subsiding and losing its market share as other competitors in the space are working towards adapting to the crisis.
The growth potential of many SMEs is hindered by a failure to define the business’ long-term value. Being able to articulate this helps an SME to develop a more effective strategy for enabling growth. In times like this, the SMEs ought to have a clear definition of their long term value. COVID-19 has undoubtedly caused a change of plans in most SMEs but a clear vision to work within the long run will add to their fate post-COVID-19.
As research demonstrates, there are a number of practical steps business owners can take in the strategic development of their business in order to maximise their best chances of achieving it and working effectively during a crisis.
All of these will count on the fate and the future of the SMEs post-COVID-19.
Precious Okereke,
University of Port Harcourt
Be the first to comment