Businesses are about to experience a wave of change. As if the past few years weren’t confusing enough, businesses are trying to prepare for the challenges they can see coming in a post-COVID economy.
Change is always hard, but natural selection chooses those most prepared for change.
Speaking of natural selection, Charles Darwin stated the following:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most adaptable to change.”
—Charles Darwin
Can Businesses Adapt Ahead of Time to Survive Post-COVID Challenges? We Think So.
Both good and bad changes are coming, depending on how prepared you are for these changes.
According to the quarterly Vistage CEO Optimism Index of Q1 2021, most CEOs think rapid growth is coming in late 2021 and into 2022, citing growing vaccination efforts and an increase in federal spending.
CEOs are planning on increasing hiring and spending due in part to small businesses and mid-size businesses reopening, and a positive outlook on the $1.9T made available to Americans in the American Rescue Plan.
76% of CEOs expect increased revenues in the next 12 months.
According to the survey, 76% of CEOs expect increased revenues in the next 12 months. The largest increase since Q2 2018.
Download the latest Vistage survey results
Though most welcome the idea of growth, when a business is not ready for rapid growth, it will be confronted with challenges along the way.
Good News About Rapid Growth
Who doesn’t like growth, right? Everybody likes the idea of more business, and more money flowing in.
After long lock-downs, many businesses ground to a halt and were slowly allowed to open, only to continue at limited capacities.
Businesses were, and some still are, desperate to return to full capacity.
While rapid growth can definitely be translated into more money, rapid growth for any business can put a strain on time and valuable resources.
The Bad News About Rapid Growth
According to the Vistage CEO Optimism Index of Q1 2021, short-term inflation is to be expected due to bottlenecks in supply chains, but the report expects prices to balance as bottlenecks loosen and the economy makes positive gains.
In the next 12 months, 66% of CEOs plan to expand their workforce.
In the next 12 months, 66% of CEOs plan to expand their workforce, surely seen as a benefit for all.
While job growth is used as an important metric for gauging economic health, the fact is, hiring high-quality employees is going to be one of the key challenges employers will face as businesses continue to grow.
The rapid opening of many states is creating a huge demand for human capital. A large number of job opportunities—and some argue, a large influx of money available—make it a prime environment for losing employees to competing interests.
Many employees will simply not want to return to the office. They found life can continue from the comfort of their living room couches, or from their home offices.
Many will push organizations towards a permanent work-from-home or hybrid-work status, putting stress on local IT and accounting departments searching for multiple, ultimately siloed solutions.
Important Technologies at Play
One of the early challenges businesses will face in a rapidly growing economy is scaling their communications to meet the demand.
Remote-work and hybrid-work environments challenge business communications because scaling is not easy when it’s not being managed from one central “unified” location.
Technological limitations may not allow businesses to provide a professional facade when employees are working from home, oftentimes from a personal device.
What Businesses Need is Unified Communications
Since 2007, Jake Hansen, President of RingPlan has been providing phone service and VoIP solutions with a special interest in customer support and scalability.
Jake learned early-on, that business demand was moving towards a unified, centralized cloud-based solution.
Jake Hansen built RingPlan with a Purpose
A phone service at heart, RingPlan allows customers to easily add lines, extensions, softphones, and new hardware from their central company dashboard while giving users added benefits with valuable tools for everyday business.
Users are able to log in and communicate from anywhere while professionally representing the company, regardless of device. All calls (from any device) can be routed through a users’ business phone number and their work extension.
Included in every plan are services like phone, video conferencing, digital fax, and group text messaging; all included in one monthly bill.
By integrating major services like phone, video conferencing, fax, and text messaging into one platform, RingPlan makes managing technology that much easier.
Users can go from video conferencing to making a call. They can then follow up with a text message or fax, all from the same dashboard.
Access them all from your mobile phone app.
Conclusion
Companies will face many post-COVID challenges as the economy continues to open. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index rates CEOs’ optimism about the economy while outlining challenges that businesses will continue to face.
Although the survey shows a high amount of confidence in the first few years after reopening the economy (2021-2022), RingPlan presents specific challenges-of-scale businesses will face that come along with rapid growth.
Challenges in regard to business communications– as employees push to continue working from home or a combination of work from home and office (hybrid)–will present a preventable challenge when addressed with Unified Communications (UCaaS) technologies like RingPlan.