Project Reboot After COVID-19: The ProTouch’s Perspective

(Perfect) planning is impossible, but planning is essential.

~ Michael Mensah Baah (Chief Operating Officer, ABSA Bank, Ghana)

Preamble Question

Would you plan for the best of tomorrow with your worse of today?

Would you plan for the worst of tomorrow with your best of today?

The #CitiBusinessFestival is a favorite of ProTouch and we mean, anyone we have a working relationship with; from the staff to customers and to all well-meaning stakeholders. The 2020 edition of the festival commenced with an online and in-studio forum dubbed ‘Reboot: Restarting your business after COVID-19’.

Varied reasons of eagerness incited our interest. Amongst the two most ranked were:

· How will a forum be conducted in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions?

· When is ‘after COVID-19’? Could it be after government's freebies?

Knowing how the 2019 Corona Virus Infectious Disease (COVID-19) has caused most businesses to temporarily shut/lockdown, staff to work from home and compelled customers -in our case students- to also learn from home coupled with the overarching dilemma of when this disease will finally be over, we couldn’t wait for the lessons of this forum.

It was instructive to know that, two (Dr. Ali-Nakyea and Michael Kpoto) of the four panelists were virtually connected to whereas the other two (Taaka Awori and Michael Mensah-Baah) were in the studio. The audience, including ourselves also sat on our online chairs (through zoom and live streams) and partook in the forum.

The significance of this ‘new normal’ for us at ProTouch meant that, a portion of our business processes is what needs be digitized and not necessarily the entire process. Businesses in today’s competitive markets need to have a strategic blend of both online and offline presence.

By the powers vested in Bernardino Koku Avle as the host, the forum segmented on four thematic areas; Leadership, Business continuity, Compliance and Strategy. In situations when times are not normal, every business needs to pay attention to these four ‘protocols’ same as you and I are also adhering to COVID-19 protocols of hand washing with soap under running water, staying at home, using alcohol-based sanitizers amongst others.

Credit: Citifm and CitiTV ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIs4kg1-T3I )

Theme 1: Leadership

The one word that stood out from the Chief Executive Officer of Busara Africa, Taaka Awori is ‘AGILE’. According to the wordweb dictionary, agile means to move quickly and lightly. This is the time for passive business leaders or owners to be active and mentally intelligent.

Agile leaders must develop organizational resilience by not only bouncing back but learning to bounce forward twice, faster and better. There should be that sense of purpose and urgency, driven by values. They should occasionally be thinking of the WHYs other than the HOWs. Agile leaders should be forward looking in order to anticipate the future, cope and learn from both the positives and negatives of present day change.

A swift shift from management to leadership is essential here as the former focuses on today’s mission and the latter focuses of tomorrow’s vision. The agile leader has to be trustworthy by putting his/her own words first. A classic example today will be instructing lower level staff to wear face masks when middle and top managers do the contrary.

The agile leader should also be committed to past, present and future promises by accepting and adapting to the changing business realities that is, the ‘new normal’. The leader should connect and communicate with staff and customers with emotional sensitivity because these two groups of persons are those that make or break business successes.

The agile leader has to develop both listening and gut skills that will not only make him/her stand up to talk but also to sit and listen to anyone within the business ecosystem.

Theme 2: Business Continuity

‘What businesses do not do well is investing in having a business continuity plan’. These were the initial words of Michael Mensah-Baah, the Chief Operating Officer at ABSA Bank, Ghana.

The above remark is profound knowing that, businesses ought to be going concerns. ‘If it is the vision of every business to exist into the foreseeable future, why don’t they have a continuity plan’, a colleague puzzled me.

Business continuity plan differs from sustainability and succession plans, but both are informed by it. The business continuity plan asks the fundamental question of what unexpected situation can discontinue business operations. This question when assessed, executed and evaluated becomes a buffer plan to either mitigate or eliminate business disruptions because the plan anticipates what conditions can go wrong or likely to go wrong and adversely affect the business operations in worse case scenarios.

The plan takes into consideration internal strength and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats present or likely to be present within the business itself, its industry, local and international economies as a whole. For example, most businesses (including government) in December 2019, should have planned for the disruptions of COVID-19 while it was in China before its importation to Ghana in March 2020.

Because the world of business is uncertain, plans should allow for flexibility depending on the assumptions underlying them. Business continuity plans need not to be static, but malleable to allow room for changes and easy adaptability from the environment. The new phase of business continuity is finding solutions to the present challenges of existing customers.

The measure of business successes today is not quantitative that is, ratios, targets and finite numbers, but qualitative thus, how businesses have met the changing expectations of their customers in the areas of; quality service at least affordable prices and their association with brands that are environmentally and ethically friendly.

For a business to give quality service at affordable prices which is also a new normal, it is imperative that business manages its cash flow very well so as not to end up with high prices that will in turn suffocate customers or do not meet their budgets.

Managing cash flow simply is keeping an eagle-eye on inflows, outflows and their timings. This can be achieved by cutting on expenditure that are neither important nor ordinary in the business. If possible, find a cost, time and technological effective approach to reduce business expenses because revenue is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is always king.

Again, businesses should deepen their partnerships with suppliers and negotiate for favorable credit terms with the long intervals in order to hold on to their outflows whilst in turn, give customers the incentives to do more businesses with them within the shortest intervals in order to quicken their inflows.

Theme 3: Compliance

Dr Ali-Nakyea of Ali-Nakyea & Associates advocated that, government’s stimulus packages should be used to encourage businesses to streamline their activities and as such, beneficiary businesses must be vetted to assess their level of tax compliance.

COVID-19 has not changed or revised Ghana's tax laws, but have only allowed for some flexibility for which regular communications with the Ghana Revenue Authority is very important in order to meet all the requirements that have been set out in the laws.

The extension of deadline for the filing of annual tax returns from the previous four months after a business’ accounting year by two more months, is a relief that businesses took advantage of in order to ensure their compliance as well as avoid penalties and interests as a result of failure on due dates. Businesses have to acknowledge the difference between filing and payment of taxes as an extension in time for filing does not absorb a taxpayer from payment of taxes.

In furtherance, there is the opportunity for businesses to electronically submit their monthly taxes; Pay-As-You-Earn, Value Added Tax, Withholding Taxes and subsequently pay taxes through the banks.

In this time of COVID-19, businesses have to keep proper records of any donation to the state or a worthwhile cause so as to take advantage of a deduction as provided for in the tax law.

More important is the fact that, businesses have to do self-audit or tax health check by perusing through their books to know what tax types and how much they owe and where otherwise there is overpayment, an application to the Ghana Revenue Authority for a set-off is permissible. A credit or refund from this exercise can be fresh capital for the business after reboot.

Theme 4: Strategy

And Michael Kottoh, Managing Partner at Konfidant asked, ‘is your business case still relevant? This question can only be answered with the admission that, all sectors will bounce back but not all businesses within the sector will.

In computing, a reboot can either be cold or warm. Nonetheless, strategic rebooting of businesses after COVID-19 is the assessment of relevance and irrelevance. Business leaders should ask themselves if their business cases or models are still relevant in the midst of disruption or will they still be relevant after a disruption.

It takes the medium to long term for a business to become irrelevant after a disruption like COVID-19 and the only route of escape is for business leaders and managers to keep an eye on the adjustments that their competitors are making within the market regardless of the fact that, your customers and demand levels remain marginally unchanged.

Competition is always increasing and thus, competitors are also finding superior and much efficient ways of doing business. The forces that cause business irrelevance are subtle in the short term because they also present temporary windows of opportunities that closes in time when they are not fully capitalized upon.

Irrelevance happens in the future when businesses fail to take advantage of relevant present day opportunities. Today’s world of business is such that, there are no permanent opportunities anymore, so businesses have to capitalize on temporary ones.

Businesses have to look beyond their products or services and occasionally revise their value proposition, innovate new products or services, enhance capabilities and skills that are needed to meet the current needs of existing customers.

Businesses have to do the unimaginable things of tomorrow in their quest to reboot and staying relevant.

Conclusion

As a local internet and administrative support service provider, the shock of COVID-19 has been felt by ProTouch especially when we have to return from a three-week shut/lockdown with the unfortunate loss of incomes of most of our customers. Again, because our services are largely delivered in a personal or one-on-one approach, the fear of contracting COVID-19 and the directive to stay at home have disrupted the business in terms of non-achievement of both operational and financial targets.

However, ProTouch is using the worst of today to plan for the best of tomorrow. That is, ProTouch is capitalizing on the 'ideal' time and opportunity presented by COVID-19 to re(train) through online courses, reflect on our past five years, rethink our business model, how to sustainably do business, give a shoulder of help to our customers in need, identify prospects in the 'new normal' and generally 'put our house in order' to prepare, plan and face a relevant business future beyond tomorrow.

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