As the Corona Virus outbreak impacts individuals, countries and businesses alike, everyone across the globe is finding ways to navigate the consequences of COVID-19. At this point, maintaining business continuity while ensuring employee safety is of utmost importance. In times when this pandemic is causing major disruption in the global supply chain, it is imperative that business leaders continue operations and manage customer relations optimally.

Although the long-term consequences of this are yet to play out, there is an increasing realization among business leaders about the implications of this small virus on their profit margins. It is critical for businesses to have an aligned approach that integrates them in this disintegrated environment where most of their employees are working from home. Which is why, exceptional circumstances like these, call for exceptional measures that can help businesses leapfrog in this time of crises.

So, what can business leaders do to ensure free flow of work and logistics in times when there’s additional pressure on supply chain?

Unify your diverse workforce

Increasing number of companies are upholding the safety of their employees and advising them to work from home. In times like these, a cloud-based ERP system that brings everyone together in one single screen can drastically help business leaders with capacity management. As most countries urge employees to quarantine and work remotely, workforce tracking might seem like a big roadblock. However, a cloud based unified system which is easily accessible and scalable can help bring together employees across the globe and give visibility into status of tasks undertaken by them. For instance, without any IT setup work, your ERP system can be accessed from anytime, anywhere via any web browser, whether Chrome, Safari or Firefox, and any mobile device and help you can track the status of your  what your sales team is doing at the click of a button allowing transparency among the entire organization.

Maintain seamless customer service

Having a complete view of your customer is more critical than ever in this time of heightened customer expectations. A cloud-based ERP solution unifies sales force automation, marketing automation, customer support, opportunity management and renewal and upsell management systems. This allows your employees to get visibility of the entire customer experience and transaction history.

When the entire organization is disintegrated, it is important to have aggregated data in one place with visibility of all functions across departments to ensure that customer service is not impacted. CRM and sales modules of a cloud-based ERP solution allow you to get a holistic view of your prospective customers as well as well current customers that are built into the company’s CRM. In such a case, anyone across the organization has access to the customer stage of sales, enabling seamless tracking of customer journey, simple external communications with the client and also user insights based of the customer’s behaviour, no matter where you are.

Measuring and mapping at home

An early prediction of any disruption can help many businesses prepare for a macro crisis. According to Financial Times, 60 per cent of executives have no knowledge of the items in their supply chain beyond the tier one group. Having a robust ERP system not only allows supply chain managers to be aware of core suppliers who are in the front line of disruptions. That is why it is important for businesses across industries to invest in an ERP system that allows them to map their suppliers several tiers back. Companies that fail to do this are more vulnerable and less responsive when a crisis erupts.

According to Havard Business Review, companies that had mapped their supply chain, in the first few weeks of January 2020 already knew which parts and raw materials were originating in various areas in China. As a result of this, they were able to fast-track their responses and bypass the frantic hunt for information. Which is why adopting to an ERP system that gives you visibility into your suppliers can help you take preventive actions and future-proof you from large-scale crises.

As every business and individual across the globe finds ways to fight this deadly virus, we at Bista are committed to support your business through the course of this pandemic to help you maintain its continuity no matter what. We understand the criticality of business continuity and are here handhold you with your ERP needs to ease the problem of accessibility and transparency. We want you to know that we are available for your unique business needs in this exceptional time and you can count of us to support your business needs.