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Despite the fact that some businesses experienced growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, I understand that this situation could be tough for most businesses.  Some experts are saying this is only the beginning. Whether the pandemic ends within a few months or years into the long-term, business owners need to be ready, reassess, and make changes to their business strategy in order to weather the storm.

Facing this undesirable situation, there a few things I look into and implement:

1. Look at My Numbers

Every good company should have a comprehensive financial statement that allows its management to make a well-informed decision. It’s imperative that I know the financial position of the company, such as revenues, expenses, and cash flows.  For company with ERP systems, it would be easier to look at the number and perform business analysis.

2. Understand the Market and Determine the Sales Target

Once I have the number ready, I began with break-even analysis, in which I examined the level of fixed costs relative to the profit earned by each additional unit produced and sold. Thus, understanding the minimum number of sales we should achieve to keep the business afloat.

3. Conduct a Sales Forecast

The pandemic could potentially affect the revenues of our companies. Therefore, I should anticipate the market trends and forecast the sales based on the macroeconomic condition or engagement with our customers.  Our customers would be one of the best sources to understand what our market will look like in the near future. If the forecast shows that we are able to sell above the break-even quantity, we can temporarily assume that our business would sustain in the near future. However, this analysis should also be complimented with cash flow analysis to ensure that we do not run out of cash in the process. If the forecast shows that there won’t be enough sales or cash to keep our company running, consider a pivot strategy.

4. Analyze Our Ongoing Burn-rate or Expenses

Look at where my business is currently spending money, and consider which expenses are avoidable. Think about excess marketing, the size of your company, and other non-value added expenses that may be reducible without affecting the quality of our business. I identified which of our business functions are essential to continuing operations, and if those functions are supported by third parties, we should contact them to ensure appropriate measures have been well coordinated.

5. Adapting to the Current Market Trends through Pivot Strategy

I spent some time to understand the current landscape of our market and find a way to optimize our business’s positioning. One way to do it is to look at what competitors are doing and to understand the one who making it through crisis.

One way to pivot is to provide our services digitally. In this situation, many of our customers or potential customers have limited the number of visits. Therefore, we offered a video conference services, from customer support to digital presentation. We should also look at sectors that are still doing well during the coronavirus outbreak. It is possible that our business already has something of value to one of those sectors that you’ve not previously considered. For example, some corrugated boxes company in India has looked into the health sector by developing a box bed, or us in Indonesia, focusing on certain niche market that grows due to increase in product delivery services.

According to Martin Zwilling in Forbes, there some common routes we could take to pivot, such as: customer problem pivot, market segment pivot, technology pivot, product feature pivot, revenue model pivot, sales channel pivot, product vs. services pivot, and competitor pivot. In choosing the appropriate pivoting routes and strategies, I recommend that you start with identifying the key issues, have a careful plan in place, and more importantly, preserve functions and processes that still work.

6. Implement Health and Safety Measures

First and foremost, we must, of course, protect our people.  In our company, I developed a pandemic management structure as part of Health, Safety, and Environment Department. I assigned personnel with appropriate authority and competencies; and develop a reporting channel should any unforeseen or undesirable situation occur. Our company should be able to quickly identify whether or not there are employees affected, any report of sickness or suspected symptoms, provide protocols for working from home and revisit travel and insurance policies.

We also invited an experienced doctor to raise the employees’ awareness and to socialize the precaution they should take to avoid the spread of coronavirus. In one online webinar on Tuesday, 12 May 2020, I have discussed how our company treated our employees as a team in dealing with covid-19. With more than 2000 employees, it is impossible for top management to protect the employees from the viruses without all employees’ involvement.

The use of technology will be central to ensure productivity while maintaining social distancing. We can use video conference system like Zoom or web-based ERP system to allow employees to manage their work from home. We also used social media as a communication channel for health education to our employees.

7. Pray and Stay Positive

Finally, I believe that “the Storm will surely Pass” and things will get better. We, as entrepreneur, only need to adapt.

Today is the 100^th day commemoration of my grandfather’s passing.  Being the first grandchild, I appreciate countless precious time I had with him, listening to his life experience, his advice, and understanding what made him a well-respected individual.

My grandfather, Mr. Soegiharto Njoo also known as “Njoo Hee Bao,” was not born from a wealthy family. His family was barely able to consume a nutritious meal. Rice with soy sauce was probably one of the best foods he could get.  He started working at the age of seven and moved to Indonesia at the age of ten with nothing but gut and willingness to get a better living. In Indonesia, he began working as an unpaid labour in a shop where his father worked, and he only got food as daily compensation. This dire situation did not discourage him to work hard and grab opportunities. He started lending money from his employer to start a business.

He ventured from one business to the others, from selling cigarettes, candies, and peanuts to establishing noodle shop and soap factory, until finally, he became a successful sugar distributor. However, his endeavor and struggle did not stop there. Government forced him to close his sugar business due to anti-monopoly / antitrust law prohibiting one firm to dominate the market. With his keen eye for opportunities, he closed the sugar business and built a national scale paper factory – PT. PAKERIN, corrugated boxes mills, banks, and real estates.

Through his life I learn priceless important life and business values, such as:

Be Courageous

My grandfather is a person with courage and determination. He took the risks and did what was necessary to grow his business and to take care of his family.  Being forced to close his well-established sugar distribution business was very devastating for my grandfather. But, he quickly explored other business opportunities. He searched for partners, funding, and finally, developed a paper factory. However, his first attempt was a major failure. The used machine that he invested could not run as expected and he was left with nothing but a license to run a paper business.

With positive attitude, he flew to Taiwan to learn from the engineering experts. There, he saw a truck filled with sugarcane bagasses and found out that those bagasses can be used to make papers. While in Indonesia, bagasses were thrown away and burnt.  With little technical understanding, he saw an opportunity and invested a new paper machine capable of manufacturing papers from bagasses. As the result, our company was able to produce papers with minimal raw material costs and earned substantial profit.

Perseverance

My grandfather showed us that as long as we work hard and continued to learn, we will be able to realize everything. To instill this value to our family, he put his life story in the wall of our house, in which he described his struggles, his endeavor, and that his successes did not come instantly.  He told me that in his early endeavor, he had to wake up very early in the morning to source products from Surabaya and cycling back to Krian, Sidoardjo to sell them. He said “you have to be the first to serve the market, if your customers have bought somewhere else they wouldn’t buy from you.” He saved money penny by penny every day until he accumulated enough money to scale his business.

Building Connection

My grandfather is a well-respected individual. Not only did he develop trust, but he also developed connection and loyalty. He did not hesitate to help people who needed help and he always kept his words. Today, we have many managers, employees, and staffs who are very loyal to the Company.

Many people told me how my grandfather had helped them in their business. One customer said that my grandfather continued to supply product during his difficult times, while other suppliers did not. Now, he became one of the biggest and most loyal customers to our company PT. PAKERIN. Despite a significant price discrepancy with competitors or slow market condition, he is committed to purchase from us.

There are many other life values and life examples he had shown me, but above all he told me that it is because of God’s grace and blessings.

I hope my grandfather’s life story could inspire you as much as I am inspired by him.