10 opportunities for SMEs in the 'new' normal
The big question facing us all is what will be the ‘new’ normal. We know that there are likely to be disruptions in how we work and live for the coming months and years and new habits and needs will result in fundamental change.
We have been looking at the latest research and trends both in the UK and across the world and have identified 10 opportunities for SMEs for now and over the coming months and years. We would love to hear what you think and what you have been planning for your ‘new’ normal.
1. New ways of working (at home)
Shift: There has been a dramatic take up in remote working. Zoom was downloaded 2.13m times around the world on 23 March, the day the lockdown was announced in the UK– up from 56,000 a day two months earlier (Apptopia) and 29% of people in China tried telecommunications for the first time (Kantar March 2020). As commuting reduces, employers and workers will invest in technology and equipment for home working spaces.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you help people work more efficiently whilst working remotely? How can you provide new ways of working such as HR policies and insurance? How can remote workers become a new market for you? How can you reduce historic infrastructure costs?
2. Interest in health and hygiene
Shift: In China, there was a huge uptake both during and post isolation in household cleaning products, epidemic prevention products, nutrition and health products and fitness e-classes and equipment (Kantar March 2020). In the UK, we have seen a massive increase in sanitiser, soap and face masks, bikes sales are rising and millions are joining Joe Wicks for our 9am exercise. Understandably there has also been an increase in anxiety and depression with Anxiety UK seeing a 260% increase in calls to their helpline and it is predicted there will be a Post Covid Stress Disorder.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you provide reassurance to your customers that your services and products have a high hygiene standard? How can you help the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of people that are self isolating? How can you provide your employees reassurances about safely returning to work whilst practicing social distancing?
3. Creativity and Innovation
Shift: In 1519, William Horman, the headmaster of Winchester College, said the mother of invention is necessity. Just as in the two world wars, we are witnessing innovation and creativity everywhere. SMEs have the ability to be agile and innovation is happening at unparalleled speed from K Sharp ,a R&D microbusiness in the aviation industry that has started producing facemasks and visors using 3D Printers to tailors such as Henley’s Collier & Robinson making scrubs for NHS Staff. People in self isolation are also becoming creative with an increase in sewing, craft and home cooking.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you use your existing assets and capabilities to provide new services and products? How can you tap into consumers’ new desire to be creative whilst they self-isolate? How can you encourage people or businesses to try new things or learn new skills perhaps with a free trial proposition?
4. Stay home, Buy from Home
Shift: Whilst people are in their homes, people are buying online often for the first time. People want to support their local community and businesses. Local book shops are providing quarantine reading recommendations and doing home delivery for the first time and breweries such as Samuel Smith delivering beer to homes in horse drawn drays. Even after the existing restrictions are lifted, it is likely that the appeal for global travel will fall and there will be an increase in staycations.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you provide online ordering and delivery services? How can you join with other SMEs to create pop up local shops? How can you create new leisure opportunities for people on their staycations later in the year?
5. Appreciation of nature and simple pleasures
Shift: Many people are rediscovering simpler pleasures such as nature walks, listening to bird song or reading a book. Jigsaw sales have seen a four fold uplift. After restrictions lift, we may see more interest in living near nature or in more spacious accommodation than in congested cities.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you leverage this return to simpler pursuits? How can you serve people who want to relocate from cities?
6. New ways of socialising and connecting
Shift: People are finding new ways to keep in touch with friends and family whether it is Pub Quiz using Zoom, HouseParty Cocktail hours or Netflix Dates where you all watch the same film together. EscapeHunt have temporarily closed their 10 UK sites but have created a Play at Home games to play with your friends and colleagues. Until a vaccine is available, interaction with older and shielded people will be severely restricted so they will miss out on weddings, births and milestone birthdays.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you help people create deeper social connections with friends and families? How can you provide digital access for vulnerable communities to take part in ‘normal’ life?
7. Rise in Community Spirit and Action
Shift: Communities have stepped up to support each together. Social Tech companies like onHand quickly pivoted to provide a safe and easy way for Local Authorities to organise volunteers to deliver food and medicine to those less vulnerable. Football and rugby stadiums such as Twickenham have become Covid 19 testing sites. Almost half of SMEs in our survey had taken the opportunity to do social good in the last month.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you repurpose your assets and skills to help your local community and gain goodwill?
8. Unemployment and new starts
Shift: The IMF and Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s fiscal watchdog, forecast that the UK faced the deepest recession since the 1920s as a result of the lockdown measures. There will be mass unemployment and people will be looking to change their careers or be retrained.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you provide training people for people wanting new careers? How can you support new start ups?
9. Collaboration
Shift: The crisis has seen extraordinary collaborations such as Mercedes F1 and UCL working together to create a new CPAPs for the NHS and GSK and Sanofi have collaborated to create a vaccine.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you find new partners or take part in Covid-19 Collaboration Platforms? How can you join together with other SMEs and share resources or back office functionality?
10.Change in whom we trust
Shift: People want transparency and to be treated as adults. They want evidence from experts. They don’t want to be overtly marketed at. They are forgiving if services aren’t perfect.
Potential Opportunities for SMEs:
How can you be honest and transparent with your customers about what is happening to your company and the consequences to them? How can you help customers plan for the future and enable them to make plans for it? How can you provide calm and expert leadership in a time of uncertainty?