How to get your business ready for 2021
By: Kreek Africa
Tags: Business Strategy, Business, Freelance

The greatest lesson 2020 has taught us is that nothing is guaranteed, priorities need to shift, working from home is possible, online meetings have opened up new possibilities, home can be a great office, technology has advanced, and sweatpants are the new office wear.

Whether you are in the entertainment industry, manufacturing and retail, finance, technology, beauty and cosmetics, education, freelance, or real estate, you have experienced some loss; monetary, manpower, or otherwise.

As 2021 approaches, it is only rational to prepare for it even if you have the hope that things will get back to normal. The fact there are no guarantees for how businesses will function or even survive, is the new reality. This is the reason you need to be equipped for what may come for yourself and your business’ sake. If you are wondering how to get your business ready for 2021, here are some pointers.

1. Re-launch

You have probably had many epiphanies and realizations about your business, how you have run it, what has made you succeed in the past years, what you need to do in 2021 and the years to come, roles you need to merge or those you need to make redundant, how you handle your finances, or the partnerships you need to form.

With these realizations, it would only make sense if you did a re-launch of your entire business. During the re-launch, you could give a new name to your business, change your official colors, change how you do your business including official lines of communication, and even a new slogan or tagline.

As you re-launch, you will be better placed at competing in the markets you operate in. Also, it will give your stakeholders something new to look forward to.

2. Remote manpower and freelancers

Instead of investing so much money on the building you operate in, maybe you should consider remote working. This way, your business in completely online and you can save a lot of money that would go in the running of an actual office.

Through remote work, it would be easier for your stakeholders to transition seamlessly on to online procedures.

As you consider remote manpower, freelancers should come in handy as they are easy to manage. Most freelancers are their own managers, prefer working on their own time, work from anywhere in the world, and they can give you the input your employees may not have. With freelancers, you can also contract them for short amounts of time, which makes your business progressive.

3. Where are your stakeholders? What are they doing?

Stakeholders in this case are internal (employees and staff) and external (customers, investors, suppliers). Since they are the backbone of the successful running of your business, it is important to keep up with them, to know what they are doing in their day to day lives.

Online tools have made it easy for you to track the productivity of your employees, what they do when they are not working, and how they would spend their working hours. These tools also let you know the patterns of your customers, how many times they visit your site and what they do on there, their spending habits, and their thoughts about your products or services.

With this information, you can strategize on how to retain them or attract new customers as well as employees to your business.

4. Observe the activities of your competitors

Your competitors are a great way of monitoring where you are in the business eco-system. With them, you can keep up with new trends in the market, how to get and retain customers, niches you need to fill, or opportunities you can seize.

Even if your competitors are not in the same sector as you, you can check what they have done to remain afloat during COVID-19. This way you can adopt some of the things they have done to succeed.

Through networking with your peers, you can also find out what ways are the best to maneuver situations, businesses, or life as a business owner.

5. Online presence

It is no secret that the world has become dependent on the internet. It is only prudent for you to exist on there as well. This is the time to make complete use of the resources on the internet to make a name for yourself.

Thankfully, social media platforms have made it easier to integrate. If you don’t have a website and social media pages, this is the time to create one. Blogging and vlogging are the in thing now, and you should get on board with it. People are stuck at home and are always looking for ways to entertain themselves, and podcasts have been a favorite, and you should start one.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google alerts should be in your arsenal as you go into 2021. With SEO you can make your business easy to find, as well as your products and services. Google alerts helps you monitor the behavior patterns of your stakeholders as well as your competitors.

6. Automate

Everything is automated now thanks to the internet. This has helped many businesses reduce amount of paper work they have had to do as well as the time they spend on things.

Long gone are the days when you could manually prepare an invoice, there are programs that do that for you. These programs can be for customer service, switchboards and, FAQs, because of the wonder of Artificial Intelligence.

Through automated systems, you can spend your time and energy on coming up with better strategies to survive in 2021 and cover new areas that you see potential in.

7. Always be prepared

If 2020 is any indication, things will get worse as the years go by. You and your business should be prepared for anything. This means putting measures in place that will be able to cushion you when mother nature decides to act up or when there is political unrest or other emerging issues.

Preparation also lets you know where your strengths are, your weaknesses lie, the opportunities you need to seize, and the threats you need to minimize (SWOT analysis). While it is true that we cannot tell the future, we always need to be prepared for any eventualities.

8. Adaptation and flexibility

Perhaps the most important characteristic for your business is adaptability and flexibility. Once your business can adapt to any situation, in any place, at any time, with different people, you are more successful than you think. Humanity and its needs are always changing, technology is always changing, and so should your business. In order to be adaptable and flexible, you need to be in the know constantly and be open to what is happening around you or your business.

9. Re-train

Granted the pandemic has slowed things down in 2020, but in 2021, you can decide to be equipped for everything that regards your business. The only way to do this is by re-training yourself or your employees.

There are many online courses and platforms where you can take classes that teach you different things, depending on your preferences, skills, level of education, or locations. When you re-train, you will have more skills which will in turn reflect in your business. A plus is that it may be an extra income generation venture for your business, your employees, or yourself.

Conclusion

Do you think your business can handle another occurrence like a pandemic after 2020? If you answered yes, you are ready for 2021. If you answered no, you can start getting ready today using the pointers above.