How Businesses Should Prepare for Next Pandemic? – Expert Talks

2020 is the year defined as “Before COVID19, During COVID19 and After COVID19“. The impact of COVID19 pandemic is everywhere and businesses are changing their ROI models to reach their customers in a best way. Here are thoughts from experts in the Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and Cloud Computing. Check the data and see how business are supposed to be ready for the next pandemic.

How Business Should Prepare for the Next Pandemic? – Digital Magazine

Thoughts from Industry Experts

Spiros Margaris

You can, and you can’t prepare for the next crisis. I guess the most important thing I tell all startups – that want to listen – save enough money to survive as long as possible. If you survive long enough, you will increase the chance to succeed. A pandemic can be an opportunity instead of a tragedy, as it is for many people as we know. So try to manage your money in good times so you can spend it when you need it in bad times.

Helen Yu

Technology defeats its purpose if it does not serve the greater good of society and solve real problems. Before organizations embrace any technology, they must embrace humanity as an organization. Preparation for the next pandemic begins with a thorough understanding of what happened with the current pandemic, lessons learned, what would we be doing differently. This means creating a culture of collaboration and sharing and upskilling workforce talents. We then need to have practice/process aimed at improving the company’s ability to respond to a new pandemic. This includes crisis management, business continuity plan, and established communication channels with employees and customers.

Giuliano Liguori

Unfortunately, the current COVID-19 pandemic posed not only health-related questions and challenges but also a paradigm shift in our way of living and relating to others. However, most businesses still don’t have a plan to deal with a new crisis. The Digital Transformation can help us not only as a way for business improvement but above all as a new model of life. Many firms are proposing technologies that empower agile work. Still, technology isn’t the only enabling element. We need to focus our strategy and mindset to stay relevant to the needs of customers, this is the only way to find the right solutions not only to survive during a new possible crisis but to profit from it.

Vladimer Botsvadze

Many industries have sustained shocking direct hits. Organizations should be prepared for the next global pandemic. The current crisis has clearly shown decreased workforce, operational disruptions and reduced customer demands. Corporations should establish preparedness strategies and review insurance coverage. A partnership with regional, national, and international stakeholders is key to reducing the risks of health emergence. Devise a responsive plan and develop guidelines to estimate severity in your communities. Everyone should do more effective communication and coordinate a response. We need to consider the extent to which it’s critical to regulating the supply chain of certain critical goods. By preparing holistically, we create structure that will allow us to build confidence and rebuild trust.

Linda Grasso

Well, honestly I hope another pandemic won’t happen again! However, what happened during these hard times should be a lesson to prepare us for changing our mindset. Future perspectives of work show businesses need to get ready for an organizational culture shift, where the digital will become a new normal. It means a workforce transformation, together with brand new working models. And, despite this being a big challenge for businesses, it is a change worth making if they really want to thrive in a disruptive and ever evolving world.

Nicolas Babin

Businesses need to accelerate their digital transformation. This is not about using digital tools as a priority but creating a change management project within companies. The way we used to work is not efficient anymore. More than 98% of employees that have worked remotely during the confinement do not want to go back to the way they used to work. Change management is hard but when you are forced to do it, it is easily accepted, and employees will see its benefits for their work/life balance. This is the time to get to it. The confinement has prepared us, now we can implement properly.

Ian Moyse

Business continuity and Disaster recovery have been stalwarts of business strategy for years, but despite this a breadth were found lacking during the recent Pandemic lockdown. What typically had been prepared for was equipment failure, a short period of limited office access or some need for sporadic work from home for those ill or where circumstances demanded.  Few had fully prepared for and tested for the totality we saw of everyone all remote overnight. I have heard some stories of systems that already worked for remote access, but the load had not been catered for widespread access; so where previously 200 of 5000 could access remotely concurrently, load even 80% of this 5000 and the system ground to a halt. Businesses need to assume this will happen again and learn from the practise we just encountered. There is now a need to take action on the 3 pillars of people, process and technology and identify and remove the constraints and pains just felt. This will involve big change for many legacy approaches and legacy technology providers had better watch out as their brand loyalty and lock in will be overcome by the greater need to be agile, remote and scalable.

Enrico Molinari

The hope is businesses and human society will no longer had to face such a crisis of biblical proportion. Italy and Milan, the city where I live and work, paid a very high price. In any case, in addition to having to prepare themselves with a new healthcare resiliency, the companies will have to adopt all the technologies useful for making people work with a new ethic spirit and above all connect innovation with people. In one word? #ConnectingPeople.

Mauricio Amaro

I hope we have learned and do not have “to prepare” for the next pandemic. I want to say that it has already been understood that digitality must be part of the business regardless of the line of business. If we have a digital strategy that allows us to adapt our tactics in a timely manner, it will give us a strong enough base to be able to sustain ourselves in any other eventuality (even beyond a pandemic, earthquakes or other catastrophes), and agility to adapt our way of doing things quickly and effectively. What is the strategy, as it depends on the business we are talking about, since it depends a lot on its mission and vision. The important thing is that we have to get to work immediately on building one. This pandemic is going to leave us full of tactics, but a strategy is more than that, it is a long-term vision that must be our common thread. If our new digital reality is not incorporated into this thread, everything we did today will have been for nothing.

Tony Moroney

First-and-foremost, every board should be asking why their organisation was not as prepared as it could have been for the Covid-19 pandemic. The warnings for such an event have been around for many years. The technologies, which firms have scrambled to use, have equally been available. Arguably, for too long, firms have given lip-service to digital transformation. This in itself should be a key learning for the future. Secondly, firms should assess how bureaucracy was suddenly relegated in favour of agility and determine how best this bias for action can be harnessed going forward, albeit on a more controlled basis. Finally, firms need to re-connect with their purpose and re-envision their future business model. To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.