Over the past several months, we’ve heard from more than a hundred NetSuite customers about how they’ve been navigating COVID-19. We witnessed a general contracting company shift its strategy to build more hospital rooms in New York City. We helped a twist tie manufacturer turn out a brand new ecommerce site(opens in new tab) in four days to provide PPE to those in need, and we even saw a governance, risk and compliance software company develop a free app dedicated to helping businesses manage through current challenges(opens in new tab).
We’ve stood with our mouths agape as companies proved their resilience during this tumultuous time. But what about now? How can companies build resilience as the economy begins to reopen(opens in new tab) and a new world emerges from the COVID-19 ashes?
We sat down with business leaders across various industries and departments to pick their brains on how they continue to build business resilience as we pave our way back to whatever the “new normal” may be. They discuss changes they’ve made(opens in new tab) to their businesses amid COVID-19 that will likely remain permanent, expanded control and visibility into their supply chain to enable greater agility(opens in new tab), the shift to an omnichannel presence and more.
These thought leaders also dive into their opinions on how COVID-19 will impact their industries in the future and how businesses should prepare.
Watch the video above for all of this and more.
Here is a full transcription of the video:
Kara Goldin:
It doesn't matter how big you get. I think that you still have to act small. And you still have to really understand the actual brand, but also the supply chain, and what all the employees do, too.
Dr. Jeffrey Sulitzer:
You need to be agile. You need to be on your toes and be able to be an organization that is lean and able to make changes.
Gaby Diamond:
We've had to learn how to make a pivot very quickly to the online space. And we always had streaming classes on our mind, but not in this capacity and not this quickly.
Imran Khan:
One thing that I always said that you always have to have a strong balance sheet, and I think I want to continue to stay focused on it.
Jay Milbrandt:
We reached out to our friends at NetSuite and said, "Is there any way that we can get an e-commerce store up in rapid time, to be able to deliver direct to those who need it the most?" It's freed up our sales team to handle the orders that they're used to and handle our regular customers, and it’s given us an avenue to get these products to people who really want it.
Kara Goldin:
NetSuite has really allowed us to be able to just sign in and sort of know what's going on from an inventory perspective to setting up an online business or upping my supply chain visibility. Whatever that is.
Jay Milbrandt:
I think we will continue to bring in more raw materials and stock more raw materials for the future. Because you just don't want to be surprised. Also it's like there's something with having surge demand, passing in production for these kind of prices in the future and wanting to not run so thin with your manufacturing that you're on the edge in a normal time, but you can accommodate fluctuations when the world needs it.
Kara Goldin:
I think actually making sure that people have the tools to be able to do their business, no matter where they are is so critically important.
Gaby Diamond:
Once we're in the clear of like, "Okay. Maybe it's going to be a few weeks before we open." It'll give us a chance to reevaluate and see what's better for the business, what's better for our employees. Maybe even shift some job roles around. Ways to save money and ways to be more efficient as a business.
Jay Milbrandt:
There's already a lot of us talking about, "Okay, what's next? What are the kinds of things that our people are buying?" There are things that they order in small quantities that fit really well with an e-commerce platform. They just want to buy it. It's certainly been an encouraging thing, and it's something that we're going to expand on a lot sooner than would have otherwise happened because this has been such a great experience.
Imran Khan:
Even before this crisis, e-commerce was only 11% of overall consumer spending. I think that number going to be 50% in the next decade or so.
Diane Pham:
We're going to see a lot of demand and quite possibly, philanthropic capital from individuals. Because people just don't have that additional money that they may be looking to make donations. Now more than ever, there's going to be a lot of collaboration across nonprofits because we know a single person is going to be impacted in so many ways.
Jay Milbrandt:
You're seeing exactly why we're making this transition to NetSuite. This is the reason because of these critical times and the demands for visibility and transparency in our business that we're seeing now.