Digital Solutions that can help you Future Proof your Business

Covid-19 was a massive global shock to people and businesses everywhere and businesses had to think fast on their feet to keep their doors open. Going forward, the big question remains – how can we future proof our livelihoods and their chance of future survival? 

Last weekend my family and I went to a show on Saturday evening, followed by a sneaky dessert slash wine afterwards. The tickets for the event were booked on my mobile device and an app on the same device was to book the uber to get there. At the show during the interval, I used another app to pay for our drinks.

While standing in the queue my smartwatch buzzed, with a reminder to add something to my online grocery order and update of my step count for the day.

Sound familiar? This is all quite normal behaviour for us these days, but a few years ago it would have been something of a fantasy. Technology has changed our lives significantly in recent years – for all of us – consumers and businesses alike.

Covid-19 was a massive global shock to people and businesses everywhere and businesses had to think fast on their feet to keep their doors open. Going forward, the big question remains – how can we future proof our livelihoods and their chance of future survival?

While we can’t predict the future we can prepare for unexpected challenges.

Diversify Income Streams

Lots of people thought about diversification of income streams before Covid-19 and during lockdown wish they had taken the leap to commit to them. No matter what business or industry you are in, there are ways to diversify your income streams and not leave all of your earning potential in one basket.

Industry Examples:

An Artist Selling Prints 

• Add a selection of frames to your store. 
• Collaborate with a print company and get some of your work onto textiles and other products. 
• Suddenly your 1 product – a pencil drawing – becomes a framed product, lounge cushions, hi-end prints on wood, porcelain, canvas and more!

Baker Selling Bread Products

• Add a selection of your signature baked items as frozen options to people to take home and bake later. 
• Take fresh dough orders as daily pre-orders. Payments are made in advance for delivery/collection for businesses and individuals. Whether they are picked up or not, it has all been paid for in advance.
• Add bread product accessories to your store. Bread baskets, cutting boards, bread knives, drawstring storage bags, butter dishes, butter knives, baking paper, sandwich filling packs (lettuce, cheese etc) The sky is the limit.
• You are still loyal to your primary product offering – bread products – while being able to offer value to your customer with bread product accessories. 
• Have the accessories branded and suddenly your product offering can be elevated to bespoke, artisan products with a higher margin.

Medical Practice

What do patients do when they leave their Dr’s office? They go to the nearest pharmacy to fill their prescription. Save your patient a trip and offer value with the patient being able to fill their prescription from your medical practice dispensary. While legalities may not allow all practices to fulfil this service entirely, other items can be still be sold at the medical practice.

• Over the counter medication, tissues, baby toys, throat lozenges, heat packs, first aid kits, vitamins etc. 
• Offer a subscription and deliver service to assist those patients and anybody else who may not be able to visit the practice in person.

Landscaping & Garden Service Business

• Many people quite happily manage their own garden maintenance themselves. But what is the one thing that everybody complains about? Garden refuse removal. Provide bins or bags to customers that can be collected on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis for a nominal fee. 
• Garden refuse can be repurposed and sold back to customers as compost for their gardens in due course.
• Add a range of garden products such as tonics, fertiliser or even garden equipment like rakes, forks and brooms that can be delivered to a customers door – saving them a trip into town.

Measure, Adapt and Innovate

Had a roaring success with print ads to get you to a monumental point in your business? Will that same strategy take you forward to where you want to be?
Innovation is the key to staying relevant and not getting left behind in the dust from the competition. The statement “This is the way we have always done things” is a certifiable death sentence for any business. 

Measure every event, campaign and process in your business, adopt new technology and industry trends, driving to create a bustling environment of innovation among employees. 

Identify Future Risks 

Get your team or some trusted colleagues together around a table and put together some of the worst possible case scenarios for your business. Then tackle how you might navigate the challenges and come out on top. Such as :

• Natural Disasters – Earthquakes and floods can mean no power or internet for weeks – How will your business cope with being cut off from staff and customers? What is your business continuity plan?
• Economic downturn 
• Lack of Skilled Resource – Has one of your key staff members left? How will the team manage with an unexpected resource loss?
• Fire – If your office burns down, where is all of your key information stored? Not in a cloud-based storage facility yet? It may be time for a conversation about storage. 
• Data Security – Security breach or power surge? How secure is your data?

Anticipate Future Customer Demands

Listen to your customers, find out what their pain points are, use Analytics to observe their patterns of behaviour and study industry trends to anticipate future needs and wants. Tools like Google Analytics will give you valuable real-time insight into patterns of behaviour, buying patterns and shifts between previous patterns and the start of new ones. 

A few years ago those brick and mortar stores that anticipated the shift to eCommerce jumped online and got ahead of their competitors. These days it is not enough to just have a website or a social media page, you need to have fundamental points of difference in your service offerings, subscription services anything and everything catering to customers’ high expectations of instant gratification and convenience. 

If customers can’t find you and your information online, book, pay or make an inquiry from their phone – you have lost their foot in the door already.

Future Forward

So what happens if you don’t have a website and with such a rapidly changing economic environment you are not sure that you have the budget for one either? Then speak to the Crisp Apple Website team about a bespoke website solution that will grow with you and your business.

Are you ready to Futureproof your Business?

Take a bite and book in a time to speak to the Crisp Apple team ????????‍????????????‍????