How Our Company is Planning to Deal with the COVID-19 Crisis

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, all the industries have been experiencing adverse ramifications worldwide. The life-threatening effects of the coronavirus and the way it continues to spread have dramatically impacted businesses and the lives of the people, not only health-wise but also from the economic perspective.

Several industries such as travel, hospitality, construction, and real estate are the hardest hit sectors while the IT and tech industry is reeling under frozen production in the wake of the pandemic. The global economy is facing major challenges and businesses regardless of size and their stakeholders, suppliers, partners, and employees all confined to working from home are undergoing a lot of changes and uncertainty. While the governments are making significant interventions in response to the COVID-19 crisis, businesses are finding it hard to quickly adjust to the sudden operational and financial challenges and the dramatically changing needs for survival.

At Leidsens, we are aware of the various ways the novel coronavirus is wreaking havoc in all the industries across the globe. But as a boutique web design and development company in India, we are deeply concerned about how COVID-19 will hit our industry and the impact it will have on professional and freelance web creators alike, not only in India but around the world.

Our company vision has never been limited to emerging as a leading web design and development service in India through the appropriate utilization of the expertise of our team of professionals. We have always made it our priority to empower both budding and experienced web designers, graphic designers, UX designers, web developers, freelance writers, marketers, and other talented web creators by giving them opportunities to grow further.

This is why we want to share our insight into the various threats of the pandemic on our business and some tangible actions we are planning to take to stay more prepared for the inevitable changes. Our ace project managers and team leaders actively exchange opinions, responses, ideas in various communities, and their knowledge and experience are valuable assets of our organization.

But before we jump into discussing our plans directly, we want to take you through the short-term and long-term effects of the pandemic on most industries. This will give you a better understanding of the current and immediate future situations of different industries and the factors that we took into consideration before making our survival strategy.

We hope you will find these perspectives from our team experts helpful and can adopt these measures as freelancers and agencies to deal with the massive troubling times ahead and make preparations accordingly.

Identifying the Short-Term Effects of the Immediate Challenges Posed by COVID-19

Different industries are already experiencing the short-term effects of the pandemic due to extended lockdown. As the workplaces and processing plants are shut incurring revenue losses, there are many challenges starting from asking employees to work from remote locations to testing their systems and ensuring security before they are allowed to work.

While tech giants have been able to quickly adjust to the demanding changes of the current situation by giving away advanced tech tools to their employees to enable work from home, most of the small and medium size businesses have been almost disabled. Here are some of the significant short-term challenges these companies are facing in terms of organizing at short notice.

1. Unpreparedness for Work-from-Home Culture

Just when working remotely has become a necessity for companies to continue their business, many small organizations and enterprises have rediscovered their limited capability of adapting a fully remote workforce due to poor network connectivity, outdated systems, lack of interpersonal training, collaboration tools, and enough resources to allow employees to work from home.

The other major challenges include evaluation and implementation of broader work-from-home authorizations in multiple cities in India for outstation employees who had to return to their hometowns, and the introduction of appropriate measures to avoid breaches of client contracts before permitting employees to work from home.

2. Decreased Productivity

Since many SMEs or SMBs could not rapidly utilize the remote working facility, they had to cut down their production leading to a huge impact on the productivity and performance of their businesses. Such employers have been hit severely by the COVID crisis at an unprecedented speed while the employees have been facing insecurity over the possibilities of losing their jobs.

3. Disrupted Global Supply Chains

The sudden fallout has forced businesses to restructure their responses for managing supplies. As the cost of supplies has been estimated to increase, businesses now quickly require identifying alternative sourcing strategies and supply scenarios which is absolutely not an easy task. This short-term disruption will soon convert into a long-term threat for countries worldwide since the possibility of the crisis getting prolonged cannot be ruled out.

4. Cash Flow Crisis

The lockdown has brought a detrimental effect on the working capital of most of the small and medium size businesses and enterprises. There has been a continuous pressure on cash flows as businesses had to stockpile supplies fearing prolonged disruptions and many organizations could collapse in the near future if they are unable to secure their finances soon.

Taking Note of the Long Term Threats beyond the Short Term Effects

While the short-term effects are challenging enough, the long-term threats of the pandemic on different industries are no less concerning. Though the corona crisis will hopefully be contained over the next few months, clients will soon start reviewing their outsourcing strategies and expenditures.

With the uncertain economic situation and recession probability, companies should be prepared for the potential financial threats as global clients and customers will cut down on their budgets and slow down new initiatives. This means companies will be severely tested further for a significant period on disaster recovery strategies and business continuity plans over an expected decline in demand.

So, you need to seriously focus attention on the long-term effects or even bigger challenges ahead of this coronavirus crisis which is set to change the entire system of our work culture and prospects.

1. Operating in a New Reality

Once the immediate challenges have passed, every organization will be tested like never before in terms of systems resilience that includes but is not limited to architecture, infrastructure, applications, data, and network. The new reality will put great strain on the systems that need to ensure continued stable operations by mitigating impact, preventing outrages, and recovering from the underlying conditions.

Some of the major business continuity risks will include gaps in business continuity protocols, supply chain disruptions, unavailability of critical resources, shifts in customer touchpoints, declines in demand, surges in transaction volumes, remote workforce productivity challenges associated with security and connectivity, real-time response to immediate business needs, and other security risks.

Organizations will have to reassess and restructure their operations model to reshape and secure critical functions. Additionally, the focus needs to be shifted to establishing a cohesive set of leading practices across all dispersed locations to de-risk operations in the future.

2. Redesigning Customer Experience

The COVID-19 crisis will change human attitudes and behaviour forever even when the immediate threats recede. In search of new hacks to live everyday life, people will begin to react differently with their families, social groups and other individuals which in turn will affect the way they interact with businesses.

Some of the major behavioural changes to expect now and next are lack of confidence for making decisions, shift to virtual activities for anything, search for amplified health experiences in every business, more home spending, and greater acceptance of authority.

So, businesses will have to rethink and redesign the ways of communication and provide new experiences that customers need and want. For this, every organization will have to include a continuous process of Experience Audit in their systems based on a deep understanding of the evolving behaviours of their customers.

3. Developing Digital Commerce

As the B2B and B2C organizations are finding it difficult to meet immediate needs, the pandemic has activated new buying behaviours and they are likely to continue after the crisis passes. Digital commerce is the next big thing and all businesses should be reprioritizing their models with a focus on this new wave of commerce that provides new lines of services such as contactless delivery and curb-side pickup services for customers. However, this new opportunity to grow revenue depends on the capability of scaling product strategy and stabilizing operations as well as developing strong digital channels to handle the crush.

4. Introducing Responsive Contact Centres

Since social distancing and self-quarantine are evolving buying behaviours and will constantly keep pushing customers towards adapting to digital commerce, this increasing dependency will make the role of contact centres crucial for positive brand perception and customer loyalty. This is because inaccessible and uncaring responses after this crisis will drive pronounced negative reactions from customers too fast.

So, another new challenge for companies will come in the form of increasing contact centre volumes to support customers round the clock. Every brand will require re-evaluating their contact centre planning and infrastructure as it will be significant to increase the number of responsive teams who can handle contact centres to deliver relevant customer experiences through swift, insight-informed decisions.

5. Building Human Resilience through New Patterns of Leadership

Organizations will have to focus not only on system resilience but also immediately pay attention to their workforces as they shift to new patterns of work. Leadership that sees through the challenges, anticipates changing needs of the wider workforce, and demonstrates care for individual team members as well as the community will be critical now and in the near future.

All C-suite leaders will require sharing clear plans and responding proactively without reacting to new problems, demonstrating how decisions are made, and being compassionate as the workforce struggle to cope with the new ways of work and try to function and perform. So, leaders will have to gain the trust of the workforce and also address the physical, psychological, and relationship needs of the people.

6. Creating Flexible Digital Workplace

Remote work culture will have its own challenges and most companies will continue to struggle with appropriate measures to serve clients, customers, employee needs, and establish business continuity based on local and global conditions. Organizations will have to stay prepared for higher rates of sick leave and as a result, they will need to focus on developing a flexible digital workplace to increase productivity.

So, providing advanced technology for effective remote working, internal and external policy guidance communication plan, great collaboration tools, leveraging virtual work environment, secure and seamless networking, adaptive security for management detection and response, and enhanced business continuity plans are some of the key implementations that already struggling organizations will have to work upon immediately.

We hope that this insight will help you become more aware of the major problem areas where most companies will be trying to find their zone in the chaotic scenario created by COVID-19 pandemic.

Let’s address our BIG question now.

Are Web Designers and Developers in a Better Position than Employees in Other Industries?

Apparently, when big organizations are working hard on their work policies and systems to enable work from home for their employees, freelance web creators are already set with their work stations, software and tools, networking, and remote work routine.

So, it might seem that web designers, web developers or freelancers are in an advantageous position since they are used to remote working and are already equipped.

If you support this view, THINK AGAIN.

Before you assure yourself that you are privileged in this situation, more secure and safe than employees and entrepreneurs of other industries, and your performance and revenue won’t be affected, you need to delve deeper into the impact of COVID-19 after-effects on regular SMBs as these companies form the major percentage of the customer base for web creators.

Lowered demand will call for reduced spending habits from customers as a result of which small and medium size businesses will face the most uncertainty. Here are certain situations that are likely to arrive:

• Entrepreneurs will delay new launches until the COVID-19 situation is controlled.
• Established SMBs will reduce expenses by cutting down on web creation services, site maintenance and optimization services, and might even cut a project off if it doesn’t generate revenue.
• In the worst scenario, some SMBs might even, unfortunately, close down.

What does this mean for web creators?

Fewer new ventures mean less demand for new websites, reduced expenses from clients mean less number of projects, and closing down of potential clients’ businesses mean no projects at all.

Clearly, the web design and development industry will have a negative impact on their businesses as the SMBs are hit badly.

How Web Design and Development Agencies and Freelancers can cope against COVID-19 Threats

Given the pandemic risks, we know it’s high time to take measures to keep our web creation business running and protect the freelancer community. Our experts at Leidsens have compiled a list of strategies we can adapt to cope with the crisis after evaluating the various threats and different aspects of our preparedness.

1. Minimize Company Costs

With an expected decrease in revenue, assess and re-assess the expenses you currently have for software licenses, web hosting, subscriptions, travel costs, fuel costs, paid advertising, etc. Consider cutting off expenses that you can do without during this period. However, make sure to adopt a cost-conscious approach rather than blindly lowering your budget.

For example, meetings with new and existing clients as well as your team members can happen virtually via video chat. So, you can immediately strike off travel and fuel costs. Next, you can consider pausing some subscriptions or renewals of themes and plugins to save some valuable resources.

Similarly, you can pause some of your paid ad campaigns and yet keep your marketing efforts active by regularly posting on your social media pages, sending out emails to clients and prospects and implementing referral programs, and obviously, by networking more.

2. Give Priority to Thriving Businesses

This is the time when you have to take into account the varied effects of the pandemic on different industries and find out potential sectors that are expected to thrive and grow during this phase to get rewarding projects.

Go through your client network and check if there are businesses that might need your help at this hour. If not, you need to build and grow your network to get connected to businesses that need an immediate online backup or one that is in immediate need to switch to online in order to secure new and continued projects. For example, businesses such as hand sanitizers, masks, disinfectants, home cleaning, health devices, healthcare, logistics, transportation, alternative medicines, online shops, digital payment gateways, etc. will thrive way better than currently vulnerable industries like travel, hospitality, construction and real estate. Focus on working with thriving businesses.

If you have designed or built websites before for clients in any of these thriving sectors, make sure to get some testimonials from them and reorganize your portfolio. This will help you to win trending projects successfully and secure revenue generation.

3. Continue to Invest in Existing Clients

Note that acquiring a new client is many times costlier than retaining an existing client. Prepare a new routine investing at least an hour every day to reconnect with your existing clients over emails and phone calls. Stay connected as a real resourceful agency or freelancer that can help them out where they need any of the services that you provide.

Ask them about their business and how it is doing during the crisis and inquire if you can do something to help. They might require doing new web pages, social media posts, and new content to stay relevant in the new reality after coronavirus. Approach them with solutions instead of being obtrusive. You can also consider offering discounts or other incentives to your clients who might also be looking for ways to reduce costs.

4. Learn New Skills and Tools

This is a good time to expand your knowledge and get trained in new innovative web design and development tools and skills that can currently help your clients’ immediate business goals. You can also learn conversion rate optimization and consultant skills as these will see a high increase in demand in the current scenario.

5. Collaborate with Big Agencies

To secure more leads for your business, you may consider partnering with big digital agencies that are less vulnerable than SMBs. Cultivate online relationships and prepare a strategy to send emails to potential business associates and have meaningful conversations with them regarding collaboration. Keep in mind that since most agencies will have moved to remote working culture, they would hire fewer people. So, if you have a skill that they might need during this time, ask them through a connection if they are open to trying your service.

LinkedIn is a platform which you should start using more during this time and beyond to build more connections and find new opportunities in different agencies. You may also want to focus on some government agencies, institutions and local body projects as potential prospects that might need a revamp or a new web-based solution after the crisis.

6. Stick to Values

At Leidsens, we live and breathe our values. While most agencies, companies, and organizations are considering laying off employees as a measure to cut off costs, we have pledged to stick to our company values. Our employees are our family and during these testing times, we won’t stop supporting them and our network of freelancers. We have a flexible work policy and during this crisis, we will focus on strengthening it further to prioritize the health and safety of our workforce.

So, we recommend all web creation agencies and freelancers to help each other out and ensure business continuity as a cohesive unit.

The Takeaway

The COVID-19 pandemic is serious. But do not panic. Keep a positive outlook and pay attention to make innovative strategies for kickstarting your trade again during and after the crisis period. Make sure to keep your base unaffected by having some solid and larger clients in your list for ongoing projects, continue to build your network, nurture your community, brainstorm new ideas, and adapt to the changing needs as fast as you can with a resilient approach.

Leidsens wishes all our clients, partners, web design, development and freelancer communities all the very best to tide over the COVID-19 crisis and continue to be agile to secure their businesses. Let’s build our strategies right, work together and come out stronger from this pandemic.