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According to business leaders and experts, the new strategies companies are introducing will not bring life back to normal. Instead, they say the crisis could permanently change the way we work, shop, and manage our businesses.
“This is the new normal,” said Alain Benichou, CEO of IBM China. “There are a lot of wake-up calls we’re working on right now.”
Here’s a look at how the future of business has changed, and how China is giving us a preview.
The way we work
For Despina Katsikakis, the average workplace is already starting to look very different.
In China, the company has already helped move more than 1 million workers to offices. In Katsikakis’s opinion, the crisis has rapidly advanced the future of work in more than a decade.
The firm hopes to capitalize on that change, starting with a visual guide for its clients called “Six Feet Office.” The concept, a “living laboratory” at Cushman & Wakefield’s Amsterdam office, was based on its findings from China and other comments from workers and customers around the world.
“It is a prototype that is basically there to inspire people to think of solutions, how to bring social distancing into play, how to properly prepare the building and really push people into different behaviors,” said Katsikakis.
Workers are instructed to walk “one way only” – clockwise – throughout the office, to avoid walking side by side and potentially spreading more germs. Katsikakis said the guide was based on consultations with health care experts, who shared how doctors navigated hospitals.
One of the most important conclusions the company has drawn from China, he said, is that “we must ensure that we are confident that we will return to a healthy environment.”
For years to come, imagine sensors replacing most of the shared surfaces we used to touch. Instead of swiping your entry pass to enter, for example, you can face a facial recognition camera or extract a QR code on your phone.
Since the presentation of the prototype of the “Office of the six feet”, the company has been flooded with consultations every day, if not “every hour”, joked the partner. “We have been conducting daily briefings with some of our largest global clients to help them and their real estate teams see how they can take these ideas and how we can jointly create with them.”
Although the concept requires more space, it does not necessarily mean that having an office will be more expensive. If there is one thing the situation has shown, it is that remote work is effective, and it is largely here to stay, Katsikakis said. That means fewer people will use the same space than before the pandemic.
The way we communicate at work has also changed. The boom in demand for business software, like Microsoft Teams, has been “unprecedented,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft 365.
He said Thursday that the messaging and video conferencing program now has 75 million daily users, 70% more than last month.
“We have a time machine as countries like China and South Korea have returned to work and school, and the use of equipment continues to grow,” Spataro told CNN Business.
The way we buy
In some ways, now is the perfect time for brands to pick up new customers and forge lasting connections, said Deborah Weinswig, CEO of Coresight Research, a research and consulting firm that focuses on retail and technology.
As millions of people curl up at home, they are forced to create new routines and lifestyles, he noted.
“They always say it takes 21 days to change a habit,” Weinswig said. “We are changing our shopping habits, and some of them will be quite sticky.”
Nike, for example, has turned so well that “it could change the curve that [it’s] for many years, “he said. (Coresight has previously worked on research projects for Nike.)
While the company was promoting online shopping before the outbreak, Weinswig said the business “really accelerated” in recent months. The sportswear giant reported strong gains in March, in part because it was quick to accelerate its online business in China. Digital sales in Greater China increased more than 30% in the last quarter, while weekly active users for their activity apps it shot up 80%, CEO John Donahoe told investors.
The company’s flagship app was crucial to its success. The platform launched in China during this period and encouraged users to exercise from home through a virtual “training club”, according to Coresight. Weinswig noted that the app was free, which was “critical” for users.
The company also launched more products online, including limited edition sneakers like Air Jordans.
Speed was also crucial. Nike competes in a crowded space, but it was one of the first brands to target customers who stayed home, Weinswig noted.
“They came too early to adjust,” he said.
How we manage our supply chains
The pandemic can also force a reinvention of the global supply chain.
But in recent months, “shortages of critical raw materials and supplies, along with the specter of increasing worker absenteeism, have exposed the underlying risks,” he said.
That is forcing companies to rethink how they ship or ship their products.
“The things we used to take for granted no longer exist,” said William Ma, managing director of Kerry Logistics, a Hong Kong-based company that helps companies around the world manage their supply chains.
“Right now, we can see all of these disruptions throughout almost every segment of the cargo movement in and out of China. Or when entering Europe, I can’t get the truck to cross the border.”
Before the outbreak, companies planned “day” outages, Ma added. Now, they are seeing “weeks.”
One company that hopes to save the day is IBM. The technology giant, which offers an artificial intelligence-based supply chain management program, says it has seen a “significant” jump in demand as more customers look for predictive models against the next crisis. The company declined to share specific numbers.
The pandemic was “a wake-up call” for many companies, said Benichou, the chief executive of IBM in China.
“What we want [do] It is clearly an aid in the problems we have discovered with the Covid-19. Supply chain optimization, we just discovered, so we should address that. “
“I think that will continue,” he said.
The outbreak also exposed cracks in the supply chain that most companies didn’t even know about, according to IBM researchers.
At the same time, it may be too early for companies to confront this problem, Ma said.
He noted that rebuilding supply chains takes a lot of capital and time, two things that most companies have right now.
“More important to them is cash growth. If their things cannot be sold, they cannot pay their suppliers, the suppliers cannot pay their sellers,” he said. “[We] I just want to get over this as soon as possible. “
