Small to medium sized enterprises, SME’s, face the same challenges as their larger counterparts:
- increased competition and market volatility
- the importance of keeping ahead of competitors
- ability to knowledge share and collaborate easily across virtual boundaries
- a drive for innovation and creativity
- attraction, growth and retention of the best talent
- pressure to drive down overheads
- increase business flexibility, minimise constraints
- reinforcing corporate values amongst an increasingly transient workforce
The pandemic has certainly put additional pressure upon and affected most organisations. To be fair, the Pandemic caught most companies by surprise, more so the small to medium sized businesses that did not have the infrastructure or the agility to respond quickly and adapt to remote working during Lockdown 1. This period also had businesses looking at their operational footprints, costs and plans for growth.
A key aspect of an organisation maintaining it’s competitive edge is agility. If you’d like to understand how agile your business is please take part in our the Business Agility Assessment survey and research programme.
One such organisation that I advised based in Central London had to adapt to remote working if it was to maintain its competitive edge. In order to maintain business continuity and agility, it moved its servers to Cloud computing. It also had to issue appropriate and secure hardware for those forced to work from home in conjunction with making health and safety assessments of the ‘home’ working environment.
By embracing new technologies such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, it was able to maintain connectivity between employees and engender a team spirit whilst working in isolation. It gave managers and team leaders an opportunity to check on the progress of allocated tasks. It also enabled them to give support and monitor the wellbeing of their individual team members.
Due to the resultant effect of adapting to Cloud computing and remote working the organisation is now questioning its’ operational footprint and the need for premises in a prime location. With a lease-break clause due to come into effect in mid 2021, it is now considering to ‘right-size’ and reduce its operational and carbon footprint by moving to a more cost-effective location. To support its current remote working regime, it will look to adopting ‘activity based’ work-settings and put in place supporting workplace guidelines and behavioural protocols for the ‘new world’.
The cost savings in annual rent by moving premises and installing ‘activity based’ work-settings will allow the organisation to grow and employ an additional two to three people based on contracts placed.