Diligence is key to making it through the next few months of business.
It might appear that we’re through the pandemic and emerging from choppy waters, but it’s not yet the time for breathing a sigh of relief. Business has a long way to go before it’s fully recovered from the past three years, and even when it is, the landscape we’re left with will be profoundly different than the one in which we operated in 2020.
Facing an onslaught of uncertainties including increased movement of staff, a cost-of-living crisis and a looming recession, business leaders need to manage their expectations for 2023 to ensure that their teams are set up to succeed. Whilst we cannot be certain about the exact challenges businesses will face, we do know that we will need a resilient workforce that rises to the business complexities in its path.
In 2023, I believe that businesses will face challenges yet unseen in the world’s emergence from the pandemic. Whether we like it or not, we are life-long learners subject to a continually changing landscape of commerce and consumption. It falls on the shoulders of business leaders to give teams confidence in their work and contribution by making carefully considered choices to protect their future and promote buyer confidence.
As we enter a new stage of pandemic living, business leaders are being challenged to remain loyal to staff. As firms of all shapes and sizes struggle to stay afloat following a loss of government support and hikes in expenses, they are also being pushed to acknowledge a potential increase in customer losses. The importance of bolstering a company’s digital toolkit to combat the effect of such a reality has therefore become vital.
Just as businesses are faced with price increases and competition for staff and services, consumers are faced with an increasingly saturated product market. Whether you sell enterprise resource planning software like 3EN, or trainers on the high street, it’s a buyer’s market. People are savvier than ever about shopping around for the best deals and getting the most they can for their money.
To be competitive, business leaders need to make their companies equal players by building an omni-channel presence. For businesses to thrive, they need more than just a product and a marketing campaign, they need intelligent, considered strategies that create a simple, efficient and positive buying experience for the consumer, whether the final sale happens in-person or online.
As physical stores look set to become showrooms for products that will ultimately be bought online and in-person ‘shopping’ becomes a social experience, digital retail infrastructure continues to improve. Catch-all products like NetSuite that can manage stock, keep track of invoices and seamlessly link front-end to back-end processes, are as much essential to the high street now as they always were to online retailers.
For 3EN, and other retailers of goods or services that exist solely online, however, building consumer confidence also looks like forming new relationships with clients in 2023. For us, hybrid working has made building and maintaining our relationships with clients easy, but we are also keen to return to a routine of regular in-person visits for those who prefer face-to-face dealings. The priority for 3EN now is to make life easy for our buyers in an overwhelming market by remaining a consistent yet continually improving presence in their lives, in whatever way they need.
People want to have confidence in the brands they work for and purchase from. They rightly want us to be the voice of expertise they need to make informed, wise and assured choices as the world changes around them. In 2023, it’s time for business leaders to do their due diligence to ensure that they are a clear, supportive and welcome guide for both staff and customers.
Dale Cree is CEO of 3EN, one of the world’s leading Oracle NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Solutions Partners, with operations across Europe. Its cloud technology helps businesses to drive growth through improving efficiency with seamless integration between Oracle NetSuite and other software platforms. 3EN’s clients include Fitbit, Medguard and B-secure.
