How a Business Mentor Can Help You Consider Your Future Business Scenarios & Adapt to Emerging Business Trends

01st Feb , 2021

As we thankfully farewell 2020, we must reflect on lessons learned and think how our businesses could have performed better. If only a business crystal ball had had been available prior to the pandemic!

Few could have anticipated the challenges and hardships faced by individuals and businesses as a result of the pandemic. However, with 2020 behind us, we must all look to 2021 and prepare for the many possible business scenarios that we will face.

Given the significant business and social changes and disruptions that we have recently experienced, and may continue to experience in the near future, what business opportunities will evolve? Have you and your leadership team proactively prepared your business strategy for the coming year? Have you considered what is trending now in your markets, with customers demand and with your competition in their delivery of products and service to customers?

It is time to consider the various difficult and opportunistic scenarios that your business could roll out in the next year to better take advantage of changes using your already identified strategic competitive advantages. Strategy development and subsequent implementation is an area where a trusted business mentor can provide assistance, helping to galvanise your leadership and your people into action.

Through great communication with customers and potential customers, you can instil anticipation and direct their focus onto your offerings while improving customer relationships. Your suppliers will also benefit by good positive strategy and communication, as this improves confidence in you and your business which in turn will motivate suppliers and customers.

Why it’s Important to Look Ahead

At International Business Mentors, our business mentors and business coaches are facilitating business leaders to think strategically and to crystalise, anticipate and evaluate scenarios to be planned and implemented in the coming years.

Scenario planning is about risk identification and management. Some of the scenarios thrown up will come with high risks and potentially bad financial performance. These need to be anticipated, and plans put into effect to reduce the risks and the potential downsides. This scenario consideration approach is much better than simply reacting to downsides when these occur, as the impact may have been controlled to a much better extent if anticipated and planned for in advance.

As we now see light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, we wait for the potential vaccines to be effectively and promptly rolled out. The post vaccine scenarios will allow us to kick-start our businesses, move on our strategies, and reconnect with staff, customers and suppliers. What will emerge post vaccine will be a new business norm, and a good plan of implementation of your strategy must be in place and not left until after the event. This may necessitate readdressing dynamically detailed business plans, renegotiating new contracts and policies, re-considering the appropriateness of current office or building space, optimising flexible working patterns to suit the strategy, and looking at streamlining all processes in operation, customer facing interfaces and IT platforms. And of course, your top focus will be how to connect better with customers and grow your business

In all these business adaptation processes, you and your business could benefit greatly from business mentoring and coaching from an experienced business mentor or coach.

Currently Trending Areas to Consider

Some areas that are trending now include:

• Re-imagining IT platforms to better service customers, reduce costs, reduce investment in systems long term, reduce risk of failure, boost data security and loss of data, plus improve analysis capability of customers data to aid marketing and selling processes.
• Artificial Intelligence – In this brave new world, we must anticipate and consider how AI fits into your organisation and how it will impact productivity and staff.
• Diversity – How to create a workplace with a mix of age, gender, background and experience to optimise the business performance.
• Flexibility – How best to work remotely and with flexible hours, to improve business performance and reduce costs.
• Innovation – We saw some amazing examples of how businesses adapted to the COVID-19 challenges in 2020, but innovation needs to be proactive and continuous.
• In person vs. virtual meetings – What works best for your organisation? Consider the time and cost factors, as well as the need for travel, reducing travel costs and increasing available time for your people to work instead of travel. Get input into how this could be developed further to maximise the benefits form virtual meetings.
• Environmental sustainability – More pressure is now applied to businesses to create solid environmental policies that consider population growth, density, land use, climate change and waste. This is also part of good corporate citizenship and should be actively marketed.
• COVID plan – All businesses must have an effective and compliant COVID plan, which will have long term implications for people who are now more sensitive to infection control and will change their behaviour. This will involve customers and your own people.
• Safety in the workplace – Continue to improve your safe working environment. Especially consider operational safety processes, risk identification, reporting of accidents or incidents including near misses, industrial manslaughter, corporate strategy addressing mental health, hygiene, and social distancing.
• Look for changes in markets, customer demand and preferences, operations, supply, competitors’ behaviour and their adaptations in the market, social media impacts, regulatory changes, and geopolitical trends. Consider if there is a need or advantage to readdress business plans, market tactics, purpose and strategy as a result.
• Ethics and Values – Would customers do more business with your organisation if ethics and strong values are paramount to your business?
• Risk identification and management – Are you monitoring and evaluating risks to the business in a systematic and reasonable approach? What plans have been made to reduce and manage the risks in the business plan? How often are these reviewed by the leadership?

Call International Business Mentors today to discuss how we may be able to assist you with business mentoring and coaching from a qualified business mentor or business coach.