Christian Gualtieri, Gold-Vision CRM, Business Development Manager
Christian’s focus is to help spearhead the global expansion of Gold-Vision in the Canada/North America region. His drive is to thoroughly understand a client’s needs, challenges, and opportunities, working alongside them to uncover a CRM that captures their workflow.
1. How can businesses smooth the transition of reopening their business in the coming weeks or months?
Businesses should stay informed on government developments and the initiatives they are putting forth with assisting companies in safety and comfortability for reopening strategies, such as large-scale testing for the broader population and access to PPE. The key to transitioning back to business is making people feel as safe as possible in returning to a physical workplace. We are in an in-between situation of wanting and needing to restart the economy but balancing the risk of a second wave or spike in infections after all the measures and progress for flattening the curve have been made. This appears to be the case until vaccination is accessible for the population. And having a better understanding of the full universe of infection will enable better isolation efforts of infected cases, and help smooth a reopening transition of the economy.
From a digital standpoint, many companies may have taken the slower downtime to reassess their digital tools. It is important that with the reopening phase of their business they ingrain these processes so they endure moving forward. Having time to experiment with these new processes is critical to see what works and does not work as they ramp up their activities.
2. What are the differences between business operations pre and post-COVID and what is your advice to small businesses adapting to the new normal?
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an insightful experience for organizations to see whether they have the operations in place for internal collaboration, building trust among their teams, having effective processes that successfully capture their business workflow and if they have a complete and thorough historical record and understanding of their client interactions.
One enduring change coming out of this pandemic is companies are having a rethink about the digital resources within their organization. No longer can companies rely solely on spreadsheets and their Microsoft Outlook for managing customer interactions and status updates on sales, account management, and customer support. It may have worked in the past, but not being able to physically interact with co-workers has poked holes in disparate knowledge management and uncoordinated internal communications.
The other change that may be coming is more companies may adopt flexible remote working policies after this pandemic. This could be a revamped work benefits perk while other organizations may make the entire shift to it because it worked for them. In a post-pandemic recession, companies may look at commercial real estate for an office as an overhead they can do without.
Our advice is to ensure you organize your digital resources for both the front and back end of your business. Ask yourself if you really have a grasp of who your clients are and the history of their relationship with you. If not, it is important to think about investing in those resources. I personally have spoken to some businesses over the past couple of months who realize their digital strategy is nowhere near where it needs to be for them to remain competitive in their respective industries. They see the holes in not being able to log tickets properly for post-sale servicing or not having an up-to-date history of all the products and services they have sold their end-user customers. Having a CRM that provides a holistic 360-degree view of your clients and prospects is paramount for a company moving forward. Furthermore, an organized system in place builds a transparent culture in your company, rooted in trust, that allows for teams to collaborate and communicate status updates and the vital information for serving your customers to the best of your ability.
