8 tips to keep your business strong, recession or not

Recessions are a normal part of the business cycle. Whilst they are inevitable, they should not pose a threat to your business, or even be particularly detrimental if you plan for them in advance and are well positioned to pivot in the downturn, writes Adam Beavis, Managing Director at Stax.

At least, that was the key takeaway at the breakfast event we recently held where Mark Bouris and Tim Dillon shared how businesses are facing the challenges of the economic downturn.

Inspired by Mark and Tim, and the learnings I’ve collected in my 20-plus years of business, I’ve compiled my own tips on how to recession-proof your business to ensure you stand the best chance of not only surviving, but thriving, in challenging economic times.

Let’s dive in.

8 tips for recession-proofing your business 

1. Continue to invest in technology

While others struggle during a recession, the smart investments you make in new technology before a recession will help you operate more efficiently. This can lessen the impact of a recession and ultimately see you come out ahead, even after the market bounces back.

Look at technologies that will support your business to streamline costs and overcome operational burdens, and which help you deliver better or more innovative goods or services to attract and retain customers.

2. Move to a subscription-based model

Whether it’s been shaped by consumer preferences, or businesses desires to reduce their capital expenditure, the world now overwhelmingly favours subscription models for a range of offerings. Subscriptions afford businesses the elasticity to consume as much or as little of a service, which results in better financial control, as opposed to being locked into a definitive contract.

3. Consider how leveraging a hyperscale cloud provider could alleviate burgeoning energy costs

In the current environment, businesses are feeling the pinch of rising costs across their supply chain, including their critical infrastructure. Moving some of your resource and energy intensive on-premise compute activities to the cloud could help you reduce energy costs.

Hyperscale cloud providers are leading the way in working to ensure their technologies are increasing energy efficiency on the journey to being carbon neutral. These benefits are passed on to you, as their customer, and you can also reduce energy requirements by scaling workloads up and down as required.

4. Leverage cloud technologies to bridge the labour gap

This will help unburden the understaffed workforce so they can focus on high-value work, while cloud technologies are used to streamline processes and automate more menial tasks.

For example, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software which helps organisations manage core business processes like planning, purchasing inventory, sales, marketing, finance and HR, for optimal performance.

5. Give staff the licence to upskill

While you are creating opportunities for your existing workforce to focus on high-value work, consider whether they have the right skills to be able to perform and execute that work. Giving them the opportunity to upskill can deliver better performance for the organisation.

There are a range of free and paid skilling programs available which your teams can complete in short bursts, building skills that help them deliver better outcomes in their current roles, or grow into new areas of interest that match your organisation’s goals.

6. Outsource important, but non-core systems and services

There’s no point spending a fortune in time and money building and maintaining your own IT system, when you can rely on experts who can help with that. This will help reduce fixed costs and boost efficiency.

At Stax, we offer a cloud management platform with a rich and robust feature set to help businesses migrate, build, operate and maintain a thriving cloud ecosystem on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Tools like ours help organisations establish best practice cloud foundations, taking care of all critical components and fundamentals to help them unlock greater opportunities and drive innovation in the cloud.

7. Use speed and agility to create new product lines

While the pandemic wasn’t necessarily a recession, there was evidence of businesses future-proofing by tapping into technology to create new sales channels. For instance, wholesalers that traditionally supplied restaurants during the pandemic were forced to set up digital direct-to-consumer channels to supplement a drop in sales. Entertainment groups used digital channels to deliver performances at an accessible price.

Consider your business and whether this economic period provides an opportunity for you to test a new offering with your customer base and address an underserved need.

8. Take stock of your cyber security

If the recent major cyber attacks are anything to go by, cyber security should be top of mind for any business. I talk of the value of the cloud for businesses a lot, however a common misconception among many of them is that moving to the cloud automatically protects your business and customer data. In fact, most cloud providers operate a shared responsibility model, whereby you are responsible for protecting the security of your data and identities, on-premises resources, and the cloud components you control.

Your organisation needs to consider methods for maintaining this security, and whether a tool such as a cloud management platform would be a valuable investment to help you operate safely and securely in the cloud, with a prefabricated landing zone and the appropriate guardrails in place.

Don’t wait or hesitate. Activate!

Now is the time to position your business for success, rather than be left scrambling when a recession does hit. By planning ahead and putting the triggers in place, you won’t waste any time debating what to do when the time for action has already been and gone.

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