Business Automation and Software Blog

For the first time in modern manufacturing and distribution industries, demand, supply, and workforce availability have been impacted globally at the same time. Every major manufacturer has experienced disruptions across the supply chain for parts and raw materials, much of which has been driven by recurring volatility of supply from Asia.

One of the best ways to ensure your small business’ success is through well-managed finances. For many small businesses, financial success is balanced on a fine line between accounts receivable and accounts payable. While a delicate balance to maintain, businesses could practice it and be largely successful—at least, until 2020.

For so long, companies have placed efficiency at the center of strategy, focusing strategic thinking on “just in time.” This has meant running operations as close to full capacity as possible and ordering from suppliers in ways that tightly align with production schedules in order to minimize costs.

The pandemic has changed so much of how businesses operate, from pushing the majority of employees to remote work to changing technology priorities. According to one recent survey, nearly three quarters of those surveyed identified digital transformation projects that were implemented within weeks during the pandemic rather than the months or years it would have taken prior to 2020. This rapid change has made it abundantly clear that being agile and embracing digital transformation is now an absolute necessity.

Not every person is going to be a numbers person. When it comes to building a business, that can be a good thing: you need diversely talented individuals for all kinds of roles within your company. But it can also make things difficult when it comes time to communicate data to others. Insights from data need to be communicated to others and explained in a way that inspires both action and change. If colleagues can’t grasp the significance of an insight, it won’t drive value.

Already a struggle in the Amazon Prime era, warehouse inefficiency has become an even more tenuous make-or-break part of business and customer retention in 2020. Customers will easily abandon ship if they experience longer than anticipated waits or other inconveniences with their order process. Inefficiency can also lead to wasted labor. In fact, US warehouses have an average of 6.9 weeks of wasted motion per year. That’s close to seven weeks of labor time!

While businesses of all shapes and sizes have experienced significant disruption over the past few months, executives are taking initiative to learn from these experiences. This slow emergence from the pandemic is an opportunity to radically rethink both business and operating models, and look for new ideas, technologies, and capabilities that can drive the path to recovery.

Spring cleaning took on new importance in the face of the pandemic crisis, with new reopening guidelines for cleaning and disinfecting public spaces, workplaces, businesses, schools, and homes. Any location that hosted someone who was infected or presumed infected was encouraged to take extra care when cleaning and disinfecting.

The pandemic crisis revealed the fragility of the modern manufacturing supply chain. First there was supply shock, followed by demand shock. Finding basic materials and products was sometimes impossible, revealing an urgent need to design smarter, stronger, and more diverse supply chains. Many businesses have experienced first-hand the hidden costs of single-source dependencies and poor flexibility in adapting to real-time shock. Change has already begun, but supply chain management and infrastructure is still in need of a broad overhaul.

It’s fairly safe to say that no one could have predicted that 2020 was going to turn out like it has. Accurate predictions are difficult to come by, considering all the factors involved in arriving at a specific future. Technology has made some predictions more accurate—the moon landing, debit cards, Wi-Fi, and cell phones—and continues to evolve in ways we have yet to imagine.