COVID 19 through the eyes of ENTREPRENEURS

Startig with the 1^st of March, things have changed a lot, action-wise and perception-wise.

One of our suppliers, MiniCRM, (customer management system) applied a survey on what COVID-19 causes for their businesses. It had 249 respondents.

The companies’ perspectives are quite worrying, but what makes everything even worse is them not being prepared for the actual gravity of the situation. The first step would be to make an honest evaluation of your company’s situation, and then put up a strategy to help you get over the crisis. Adapt and overcome.

Our respondents offered us a lot of good examples of how to manage the crisis. They are an inspiration for us.

RoEvaluation – MiniCRM Survey

How would you describe the attitude against the Coronavirus?

A lot has changed in people’s attitude towards the new Coronavirus in just 3 weeks. The most significant change was among those who were not completely skeptical but rather doubtful about the fact that it would have such a serious impact. It’s good to see this change. It is, nevertheless, interesting that the completely skeptical ones changed their opinion and we hope that the mass-media and the internet will wake them up and make them act on it.

Actions took by companies

I am worried to see that just a bit over 58% of the companies decided to initiate work from home despite the seriousness of the situation.

This could have been explained by the companies which don’t have this option, but according to our report, 90% have this capability. It’s crucial for any company to have its employees work from home if this is possible. Only 9% have a written plan about this. 3% have just one person trained and responsible for this. If just one person is in charge, then the situation will be quite difficult and if things go out of control, you can expect a potential disaster.

A few of the answers I received for this question:

• Schedule reduction and customer interaction limitation
• Move sales in online
• Activity suspended as the area of activity is tools production
• The activity is being continued from home even if the volumes went down

Can you see changes in the income?

77% of the respondent companies can already see changes due to the crisis; this is quite shocking as three weeks ago most of them thought the Coronavirus was a joke

45% of the companies are already having huge loses

What is going to happen if nobody is reacting as we speak and comes with creative solutions? How about new ways of selling, new products, reinventing the business model of the company? In the next few months – as the governmental measures will be put into place, this will affect each business as a virus of the economy.

Whare are you expecting for in the next two to three months?

The expectations for the near future are worsening by the day. It seems that most of the companies have different opinions regarding the governmental measures even though we might be stuck in this situation for a long time.

More than 84% are expecting negative results in the following two to three months, which is in contrast with how prepared these companies are at the moment. What is going to change if there is no action plan or a person responsible with monitoring this situation and bringing change to it?

There is no need for panic, but you must act!

Here are a few answers which I got regarding the specific difficulties that these companies are fighting with at the moment:

• Being a company that produces fidelity cards and taking into account that most of our customers are forced to close their business, we lost most of our customers
• We created new strategies and partnerships
• We offer retail services, and retail going down really affected us
• Yes, some of our customers are not working anymore (they are either closed or they cannot make any payments anymore); the suppliers are far more rigid when it comes to deliveries but also when it comes to the pressure they are puttin on payment deadlines. They are risking not having what to deliver due to supply flow blockage or production closure

If you are already working from home or planning to, how is this going?

The small companies which already started work from home or are plannin to are going relatively well. Less than one third reported problems and another 19,8% are expecting some challenges for the time they start.

The ones who already had this option are, of course, in a better place already. Nevertheless, this happened for just 13,5%. This is why it’s always important to have an optimum business model, as you always have to be read for a wide range of crisis situations.

The companies which already made the necessary changes before these became a necessity are now in a better position and they can concentrate on other aspects of business development, while the ones which did not are now trying to switch their services to cloud and they have a long way to go.

Did you notice any change regarding your partners and suppliers?

Even though there are a lot of difficulties with international transportation, this surprised me. 81% of the companies experienced problems with their partners and suppliers. More than 36% of them have serious issues, which can also indicate that more people noticed problems in this area more than when it comes to incomes.

Actually, I got the chance to witness one of the best answers to this question and I would like to highlight it: I am really happy that 10 years ago I created a field in MiniCRM which I can now use to see which suppliers can work during quarantine times.

How are you planning to react in the following 4 weeks?

I received some amazing answers for this question! If our respondents are somehow representative in any way for the thinking of the Romanian business owners, we have big chances to come out even stronger out of this crisis.

• We are developing new products at a smaller cost and we are offering the payment in installments in order to help our customers step in the online world and overcome this phase.
• We will work, will adapt, will respect the rules.
• As a first step, I am trying to obtain all the approvals in order to move the physical shop in the online
• I relax and then I create, innovate, evaluate scenarios
• We are reducing our activity, fixed costs and we keep helping our customers and our community as much as possible
• Paying attention to debt collection, new customers, balanced purchases
• I will comply to and will apply the online work methodology
• First of all I am taking care of my family and then of the customers who are still active in order to make sure that we can restart everything when the time comes
• Action plans for the after the crisis period; we’re expecting this to last more than four weeks
• We’ll try to finalize the orders which are still in place and afterwards we’ll try to work as much as possible so that we can collect as much as possible when going to work will not be possible anymore
• We are focusing on debt collection, on measures to support our loyal customers; we are also rethinking our business model
• We’ll try to make cost reduction in order to be able to answer in a positive manner to an extended crisis
• We will temporarily close our firm, we’ll go into furlough and we’ll launch practical publicity (we will launch daily videos with practical advice in health and the services we are offering)
• I have organized my customers depending on the impact they can have taking into account they paying capacity and I am focusing on them so that I can keep having s solid income
• I will create new sales strategies
• We started delivering; we constantly communicate with our customers and especially with our VIP customers
• I am working on developing my company, I am learning, keeping in touch, selling a lot
• In order to improve my experience of working from home I will concentrate on task I could not do in the past due to the fast pace of my everyday life
• I am working a lot, I am creating content and I have over 40 books that I want to read and see what will work; also, I will start online consulting
• I am contacting all my old clients and trying to see if I can sell something to them
• We’re now having enough time to put our database in order and organize a better woking system

These companies should be an inspiration for anybody who is still waiting for a solution from the outside. The are a lot of things that can be done regardless the type of business, just that it involves a lot of work. The ones who are just waiting and doing nothing, there will be nothing waiting at the end of this.

What would help you survive these difficult moments and help you recover quicker?

• We are now reducing our costs so that we can survive with what we have
• Temporary contributions and bills reduction
• If all this would get solved
• If only we had buyers
• If only we could see clearer what is happening we would know what to expect
• All is fast, is online, is easy.
• If only people would stop complaining
• We have a car service, we cannot do online maintenance
• It would be good if other companies had experience with working remotely; sometimes even a Skype call can cause problems, not to mention the online handling of documents

What came to my mind was that most of the people are waiting for the situation to end or for the government to solve it. Few people asked themselves what the situation really is and how they could help. I received creative and proactive answers to the questions above so I think that the question was not really clear for the respondents.

 Signed

LIGIA NEACŞU