With the pandemic officially over, merchants who survived the experience are set to make a major comeback. Thanks to smart operational tactics like telecommuting, the use of electric vehicles in small fleets, expanded delivery services, and a renewed push for outsourcing, thousands of small businesses have decided to play catch-up to recoup lost market share, rebuild customer bases, and get back to pre-COVID levels of financial success. There’s no magic formula for rebuilding an organization.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to stage a resurgence, even in a challenging economy. The trick for entrepreneurs who operate smaller businesses is to cut expenses in practical ways that are not only economically justifiable but make long-term sense as well. The concept behind making a viable and long-lasting comeback is to learn from past experiences. If you own or manage a company, consider using one or more of the following approaches to achieve pre-pandemic sales and profit levels by making a few commonsense changes.
Telecommuting
Pandemics have a way of changing the way people do things. When millions of individuals were forced to work from home, the telecommuting trend received its biggest boost ever. Once employees got accustomed to sleeping later, not having to drive to a distant office, and avoiding the personal politics of the workplace, they were hooked. In fact, many corporations found it difficult to bring everyone back to traditional offices when the threat had passed. Fortunately, managers and workers came to an agreement in most cases. The result was that telecommuting is now a routine and common way of doing one’s job. The financial sector was the first to adopt widespread work from home policies for large numbers of its employees.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) for Business Fleets
One of the big lessons of the lockdown was that saving money in any way possible is a good idea. That point made a special impact on fleet managers who found themselves spending inordinate sums on diesel and gasoline fuel for company cars, vans, SUVs, and pickup trucks. Managing a fleet is the ultimate multi-tasking chore because supervisors must track dozens of metrics simultaneously. If you oversee a commercial vehicle fleet of any size, consider reviewing a complete, no-nonsense guide about finding EVs that have long mileage capacities. The guide also elaborates on how to evaluate the different kinds of EV chargers and how the vehicles can deliver multiple benefits based on their mileage range.
Delivered Goods & Remote Services
One of the most obvious results of mandated lockdowns was the rise of home delivery in dozens of commercial sectors. Particularly in the grocery and consumer goods niches, delivery, especially food delivery services, were a big winner with buyers and sellers. For service providers like tax and law specialists, online delivery via consultations and document preparation became the new way of doing things.
Smart Outsourcing
The pandemic induced shutdowns forced large numbers of small enterprises out of business. Those who survived decided to embrace the future of outsourcing and discovered that focusing on their main talents and hiring third parties to do everything else was a wise way to save money and operate in a lean fashion. But smart outsourcing calls for detailed planning and careful decision-making on the part of managers and owners.