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Businesses Adapt During COVID-19
7 May 2020
Corporates & SMEs Are Adapting to Cape Town’s Lockdown
When the world as we knew it started changing to survive the onslaught of COVID-19, South African families scrambled to prepare essentials in the wake of the impending national lockdown. For businesses, an unprecedented scenario arose: adapt or die. Understandably this strain on the economy creates an incredibly challenging environment for small business development throughout South Africa. However, there are some amazing ways businesses have adapted to Cape Town’s lockdown reality. In fact, business owners from South Africa (all the way to Tunisia) are showing fast, innovative thinking and adapting their strategies to keep their enterprises alive. These include:
Work from Home (WFH) Offices
Capetonian businesses quickly faced the reality that remote resources needed to be facilitated if any form of operation had a hope of continuing. Thousands of workers have set up work spaces in their homes in order to continue with their livelihoods. IT departments have had to facilitate this transition for many companies with speed before the lockdown began. This has also led to more people of varying ages and backgrounds becoming acquainted with remote conferencing applications like Zoom and Google Hangouts.
Migration to Online Classes
Whether it is language apps, virtual tutoring, video conferencing tools, or online learning software, there has been a significant surge in usage of free-data e-learning since COVID-19. In South Africa, the response to significant demand has seen many online learning platforms begin offering more access to their services during the lockdown. This is a blessing for work-from-home parents who are schooling children from home during the week, as well as professionals looking to upskill.
Adapting Products & Services
There has been a number of enterprises that have spent this time pivoting their products based on essential goods demand. For example, there are many businesses making face masks and retailers who have been selling vouchers. Several online retailers have continued to sell online for consumer orders to be delivered when the appropriate level of lockdown in South Africa has been achieved. Even businesses who used to deliver fresh produce to restaurants have pivoted to deliver to the public instead. This ensures ongoing support for local farmers by Cape Town businesses and communities.
Adapting for the Community
Redshift has switched up its business model from building just websites to building accessibility to spaza shops in the time of COVID-19. The platform helps to connect spaza shops to their customers by giving spaza shop owners the opportunity to list their business on the site and accept orders from shoppers during the lockdown. To date, just over 80 stores have registered with the site and more are expected.
At the end of the day, it is now more than ever that companies need to keep customers and employees at the centre of their focus. Agile business innovations are a necessity to survive a threat like the Covid-19 pandemic. This means pushing the boundaries of creativity. Most importantly, it means listening with real compassion in order to deeply understand what Capetonians are needing now as they watch the world turn upside down.
Contact us today for more information about Cape Town’s business resilience in the face of COVID-19.
