"Business environment" refers to the factors that surround an organization and affect its performance. In a pandemic, there are many variables that affect businesses and impact their results.

In this article we look at ways to stay competitive, adjust to changing environments, and generate corporate strategies that help you keep your business afloat for the long term while providing for safety in the office.

Maintaining competitiveness in the new business environment

In today's business environment, competitiveness is consistently affected. Maintaining market share also means that employee and customer safety must be considered in order to continue to operate.

It is true that there were supply chain disruptions due to transportation restrictions and shortages of raw materials. Also true, however, is that with quarantines people changed their buying habits and businesses needed to respond urgently.

Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate in economics and professor at Yale University, argues that there is not one pandemic but two. He notes that besides the COVID-19 pandemic we also have the financial anxiety caused by COVID-19's consequences for business.

Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate in economics, says there is not one pandemic but two: COVID-19 and financial anxiety.

Staying competitive maens changing when necessary. An example of this is delivery companies that grew during the pandemic by focusing on customers and providing for safety with every delivery.

Changes in the business environment that will continue in the long term

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The business environment will continue to change and will affect your business directly. It is constantly being made clear that we live in a VUCA world. VUCA is a concept drawn form military units stationed in hostile territories. The acronym stands for:

• Volatile, because the world is constantly changing and when planning you must remember that the business environment could change drastically in a short period of time.
• Uncertain, since there are no data to predict the direction of events.
• Complex, because the current economic situation has many variables and making the right decisions requires detailed analysis.
• Ambiguous, given that many things have no single agreed-upon meaning, and now more than ever the termsn of communication must be made clear.

This concept is not new. It emerged in the late 1980s, but it applies very well to the present. The changes brought about by the pandemic have made it clear that flexibility is essential for businesses to survive.

Corporate strategies for a changing business environment

The overriding question, then, is what we can do to stay afloat in a changing business environment. First of all, a guiding corporate strategy must be devised to address the following:

• Customer satisfaction. Companies that have survived the crisis are those that have listened to their customers and made sure to maintain channels of communication, even when they were unable to meet their commitments.
• Cost optimization. You must review your costs and cut out anything unnecessary in order to use that capital for your strategic business requirements.
• Process improvement. One of the consequences of optimizing costs is a review of production processes to eliminate unnecessary steps and ensure profitability.
• Digital transformation. Implementing digital tools saves hours of work and allows you to focus your attention on what is really strategic: attending to the business environment and how it affects your company.

Office safety: a condition for staying afloat

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The business environment is affected by COVID-19 infection rates. It is thus essential to maintain safety in the office and protect your operations.

This is a complex and demanding task, which sometimes distracts us from the strategic means of staying afloat in this crisis. To save effort in this task there are technological tools to automate the process and generate reports.

The use of digital tools to control spaces improves office safety and allows for real-time knowledge of where people are in the office. 

Digital tools allow you to maintain office safety and know in real time where each employee is, keep tabs on who is visiting the premises, and trace contacts if a positive case of COVID-19 occurs.

Conclusion

The business environment has always been affected by world events. The pandemic, however, affected it in a comprehensive manner that accelerated change and digital transformation and increased office safety.

To increase your competitiveness even during a pandemic, you can rely on software to provide  solutions and save time. Visit Parso and discover a world of solutions to rely on.

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