9 Crisis Management Steps: How to Quickly Adapt Your Processes in 2022

1. Get Started with Business Analysis

The process of crisis management should always begin with an analysis of the current business environment to help you make data-driven suggestions. It should always be the first crisis management step you take. Analyzing the business, you take a closer look at the current situation within your company, research the market, evaluate risks, suggest response strategies, get a better idea of customers’ preferences in a changing business environment, assess the resources you have, and find a way to distribute them wisely.

As a crisis management tool, business analysis means your team is always scanning the environment and analyzing the emerging opportunities, assessing the impact of the undertaken initiatives, optimizing the processes, and increasing the value of the products and services carefully fulfilling the needs of your clients.

2. Apply the Lean Principles

Lean principles were not developed for crisis conditions, but they are universal to become a real lifesaver for any business at any time. Here are the most important ones:

• Waste elimination. All your processes should be optimized to build your technology in a way that excludes downtime, distractions, and everything else that takes time, space and energy, but does not produce results.
• Effective communication. Conversations that take time but don’t produce results can significantly reduce the chances of your business overcoming a crisis. The clearer the task is, the more likely it is to be completed quickly and correctly.
• Knowledge sharing. Crisis management can be more effective if ideas for process optimization are welcome and taken into consideration. Use the crisis as an opportunity to build a new culture of knowledge sharing and communication in which everyone can be heard.

3. Tighten the Financial Belt

What is the most significant thing to be included in a crisis management plan? It is your vision of how to manage finances in conditions of instability.

Here are some tips:

• Minimize costs. If possible, negotiate to lower interest rates, defer payments on leases, and find out what your state offers regarding tax benefits.
• Use the things you have. Look for ways to get the most out of the equipment and staff you already have.
• Prepare a far-reaching financial strategy. Unfortunately, the crisis will not end tomorrow. According to some scholars, the current state of the economy is comparable to the Great Depression a hundred years ago. Think about what types of businesses you can work with to offer the best quality while reducing costs.

Risk management is now becoming a key focus for all managers causing them to learn the approaches of risk identification, evaluation and mitigation.

4. Automate Routine Business Processes

Business process automation is another crisis management strategy you could use to improve efficiency and cut costs. According to Deloitte, 77% of companies are already utilizing automation technologies to streamline routine tasks and boost the productivity of their employees. In the context of a crisis, automation solutions provide the opportunity to significantly cut costs. Cprime specialists can develop Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software perfectly tailored to your business process specifics.

Using business process automation as one of your crisis management steps can also lead to digital transformation, which we will discuss in one of the following sections.

5. Bet on AI Driven Predictions

A crisis brings uncertainty to your business. Leveraging the power of Big Data and AI can be an option to gain insight into the trends and patterns that will dominate the market soon. For example, with the help of price prediction software, you can better tailor your offers to market expectations in times of crisis. Adapting your business to the new reality with the help of AI allows you to withstand a crisis strengthening your market position by making data-driven decisions.

6. Arrange for Your Employees to Work Remotely

Remote work is no longer just a trend for some. It was a mandatory crisis management procedure created by the need for social distancing and staying in compliance with regulations during the pandemic. Many companies will not be returning to the traditional business model because they realize the benefits of online interaction.

According to research published in Forbes, the world expects a mental shift regarding work. People will finally understand that it is necessary to focus on the work itself, not on the time and place of its implementation. Think about that when developing an anti-crisis plan.

Use the Lean principles to quickly and successfully adapt to the model of remote interaction, and continue to work in this manner in the future. The crisis has already proven that almost any business process can be organized online, and yours probably can be as well.

7. Modernize Your Legacy System

As for the next crisis management step, consider modernizing your legacy system. They are costly to support and maintain, unable to cope with modern business tasks and decreasing employee productivity. Legacy systems also often lack data protection features, which can be one more threat to your business during times of crisis.

Modernizing your legacy system or redeveloping it from scratch is an option to streamline business operations and manage your data more efficiently. Our tech teams are well-versed in all the problems legacy systems have, so they will be able to turn a legacy application into a modern and better-customized one following smart and lean development strategies.

8. Set up a Remote Tech Team

Running the process of software development remotely is a well-known practice to cut development costs and access high-end tech expertise. Following the LEAN approach with remote product development is one of the most reasonable crisis management principles.

If your team cannot handle all the app development tasks, it makes sense to scale it with remote developers, QA specialists, or DevOps engineers to improve efficiency and save extra costs. And if you feel your in-house team lacks specific expertise (like setting up robotic process automation), IT staffing can become your crisis strategy. In this case, you can fill the knowledge gap, solve the current task and proceed with your team during the crisis management process.

Even a simple tip for crisis management, such as QA automation, can make the development process more efficient and reduce QA and testing costs. And if you search for managed teams to cope with such situations, contact us to learn more.

9. Keep Calm and Remember You are Not Alone

All companies that were not destroyed by the pandemic are now moving through the crisis process. Business and crisis management is a modern reality that you need to adapt to. Now everyone is on equal footing, which means this is a new start for crisis management approaches, new products and services, and a renewed level of quality.

Try to focus on the insight that risks and the unknown are not just threats to your business. Risk also presents an opportunity to help your business get the desired results faster with less effort while also creating more value for users.

Conclusion

There are a lot of crisis management strategies you can develop and a lot of crisis management steps you can take. Solving the challenges of a crisis with the help of technology innovation is a great strategy to survive the crisis and build a solid foundation for the future. Think of times of crisis as an opportunity to get started on the journey to digital transformation and consider getting our strong tech support along this path.