Formulating Response Strategy for COVID-19

The Coronavirus pandemic crisis is having a global impact. How will it affect your organization? What are the possible scenarios? How do you plan to respond? Use this template as a starting point for your business’ continuity strategy.

• COVID-19: COVID-19 Response Strategy Template
• Template: Explanatory Video
• 6 Strategic Planning Best Practices in the context of COVID-19

COVID-19: Response Strategy Template

 

The Covid-19 response strategy presented across the four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard. Source: Covid-19 Strategy Scorecard.

The template is divided into four perspectives. Let’s have a quick look at what goals are included in these perspectives.

Learning and Growth Perspective

In this perspective, we focus on the skills and infrastructure needed to execute the business continuity strategy:

• Educating employees on COVID-19 (as measured by leading indicator “Awareness program penetration, %” and lagging indicator “% of practices actually implemented“)
• Conducting global scenario planning (with some specific initiatives aligned)
• Aligning IT systems with the challenges of remote work
• Introducing employees to the principles of remote work

An example of the goal quantified by leading (marked with green rectangle) and lagging indicators. Source: Covid-19 Strategy Scorecard.

Internal Processes Perspective

In this perspective, we formulate the goals related to the internal business systems that will help to execute the business continuity strategy effectively:

• Workforce protection
• Supply-chain stabilization
• Informing stakeholders
• Implementing remote work (including strategy meetings for a distributed team)

The list of the initiatives and their statuses. Source: Covid-19 Strategy Scorecard.

Stakeholders Perspective

In the stakeholders’ perspective, we focus on the needs of our stakeholders (employees, customers, partners). Here, we map such goals as:

• Anticipating impact on healthcare needs
• Anticipating impact on education needs
• Anticipating impact on daily needs

Another important stakeholder is the community and its needs. If you have a dedicated non-profit scorecard, then you will find a similar goal there.

The business continuity strategy map template includes several initiatives aligned with the “Community needs” goal. These initiatives describe possible ways how an organization can contribute:

• Repurposing production lines. For example, Inditex, owner of retail chain Zara, starts manufacturing hospital gowns.
• Repurposing products and services. For example, Decathlon is donating snorkeling masks to hospitals. MSC Group’s Splendid was converted into a hospital ship.
• Contributing to social distancing.  For example, Czech Post allows sending free registered mail via its “Datová schránka” during the duration of the declared emergency.

Due to travel limitations, many companies have shifted from in-person event formats to online events. While the costs of streaming platforms are lower, organizations need to fight for the attention of the attendees. In this article, we share our approach to the online events that proved to deliver stable outcomes in terms of customer engagement and long-term business impact.

Finance Perspective

Finally, in the finance perspective, we map the relevant financial goals and expected outcomes. In this case, we are talking about:

• Impact on revenue
• Applicable insurance policies

To access the Covid-19 template, login to your account, select New > More templates... Source: Covid-19 Strategy Scorecard.

Covid-19 Strategy Template Explained

Let’s discuss the business continuity strategy template in the context of COVID-19 impact.

6 Strategic Planning Best Practices During the Coronavirus Crisis

The latest recommendations of the health agencies and new governmental regulations imply significant changes to the way organisations run their business all over the world. During crisis time, it’s important to keep the strategy execution effective and introduce preventive actions where possible.

We’ve formulated several best practices for the users of BSC Designer in the context of strategic planning. Not a user yet? Sign-up with a free plan right now.

1. Focus Strategy Discussion

Effective leadership and clear strategies are important these days. Create Balanced Scorecard-style strategy map(s) to communicate the “why?” and “how?” of strategy effectively. Here are the 8 steps to create a strategy map:

What’s next?

• Use the share function to define access rights for the members of your team
• Cascade strategy across different business units, create local versions of the strategy map
• Start using the map during the next strategy discussion session

2. Conduct Threats Analysis

Run an extraordinary audit of the external threats using the PESTEL analysis template. Users of BSC Designer will find the PESTEL template in My Scorecards > New > New Scorecard > More templates…

Business threats to look at in the context of COVID-19:

• Fall in consumer and business spending¹
• Supply-chain impact²
• Operational resilience³
• Leveraged finance impact⁴
• Legal impact⁵
• Work-from-home impact

3. Track and Forecast KPIs

We will face some unpredictable fluctuations during the COVID-19 crisis. Make sure you know about those critical changes early.

• What KPIs should we look at? Start with these essential KPIs.
• How to find the hot spots? Use the “Biggest gain/loss” Analysis function in BSC Designer.
• How to setup early warning signals? Assign users as owners of the goals or KPIs in BSC Designer.

4. Prepare Response Plans

Discuss with your team the ideas related to the fluctuations of the KPI values:

• Add commentaries about KPIs (simply press “C” on the “KPIs” tab)

To explain the fluctuations of the indicators, we can align comments with certain dates. These comments will be visualised on time charts for the indicators. Source: Covid-19 Strategy Scorecard.

Use Initiatives to articulate your response plan:

• Add budgets and timelines
• Assign owner
• Link to the relevant policy

Make sure the response plans are adjusted according to the needs of specific geographies:

• Budgets for the initiatives can be assigned in different currencies.

5. Know KPIs for Remote Work

Support social distancing, shift to a remote work model where possible. Implement a clear performance management system for your remote team. We’ve discussed specific KPIs for remote employees here.

6. Update Business Resiliency Plan

From the viewpoint of corporate governance, make sure the business resiliency plans exist and are up to date.

Key points to look at:

• Overall operational resilience. Implications for supply-chain, shifting to work-from-home model.
• Legal implications. For example, the ability to hold a virtual shareholders meeting.
• Financial implications. Access to financing and impact on revenue.

As always, our customer support team is ready to help you with strategy planning challenges.

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