If you own a small business, chances are you suffered a lot when the pandemic started a year ago. You may have seen the demand drop and compelled you to scale down operations. The short-term outlook of businesses varies depending on the industry.
For instance, the hospitality industry may not see the light at the end of the tunnel soon. On the other hand, delivery companies may see demand for their services to continue even after the pandemic ends.
With the vaccine gradually being released, businesses can start planning the rebuilding process once the pandemic ends. If you’re planning to rebuild your business, you can go through the following points to allow you to hit the ground running when you start offering your products back in the market.
Check Your Finances
Before you start rebuilding your business, you should check your finances. Checking your finances includes knowing how much your business was affected by the pandemic. To check the numbers, you should update your business’s cash flow and profit and loss statements. Once you have these statements ready, compare them with the figures from last year.
It would be understandable for the figures to be lower due to the pandemic. But there are a lot of businesses that turned in a profit in 2020. Your business may have also experienced the same thing. But you wouldn’t know unless you crunch the numbers.
Aside from the cash flow and profit and loss statements, you should also consider if you laid off any employees or reduced your marketing budget. You should include this when you check your finances since they will play a factor in the rebuilding process.
Review Your Business Plan
After checking the figures, you can review your original business plan. While the plan may have worked before the pandemic, the same thing cannot be said after the crisis began. But you’re not alone since businesses around the world never expected the pandemic to happen.
At this point, you should make the necessary changes to take into account the long-term effects of the pandemic. Even after the vaccine has been fully released, people will still be wary about going out in public. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still advising people to continue wearing masks even after they receive the two doses of the vaccine. So, your budget should still include sanitizers, masks, and other health-related expenses.
You should also check your business goals and see if they are still relevant in a post-pandemic world. If there’s a need to revise it, then you should revise it. If you have a website, you may want to see if it’s receiving incoming traffic during the pandemic. If not, you may want to revise it. To do this, look for a good company offering website design services to help you redesign the website to make it appealing to your market.
Consider Additional Funding
To rebuild the business, you may need additional funding to jumpstart it after the pandemic ends. While you may consider getting a loan from the bank, you can also consider other funding sources. The Small Business Administration offers several programs for small businesses looking for sources of funds.
These programs include the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a program that helps businesses ensure their employees still have work, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), which is offered to businesses that are losing money due to the pandemic. Another program, the SBA Express Bridge Loan, is for businesses that have a relationship with an SBA Express lender. The program allows them to quickly source funds of up to $25,000.
All of these programs will allow you to get the funds you need to rebuild your business. But you need to remember that a lot of businesses will be applying for these loans. And you may not get the funding you need if you’re not ready to provide the documents showing that you can repay the loan. This means you should also ensure to have all the paperwork done before you submit your loan application.
Make Contingency Plans for Possible Issues
Despite what a lot of people are saying that the current pandemic is not a once-in-a-lifetime event. With this, your business plans should include contingencies in case something similar happens in the future. You should include what you learned during the pandemic in your new business plan to ensure you’ll be better prepared if another similar event happens in the future.
Rebuilding a business after the pandemic is possible. All you need to do is review what happened and use these lessons as your guide when you restart the business in the post-pandemic world.
