With Covid-19 submerging the world into a state of inactivity, and for the business to come out of this unforeseen torpidity needs effective strategies. To combat Covid-19 and still be profitable, the businesses need to rethink the business model, the logic of doing the business.  To continue with the habit of spewing profit as in the pre Covid-19 world, the business houses must opt for residual choices enforced by the new business model in the Covid-19 world. By residuary choice, the economist means opting for the benefits that last the duration of the service provided. As in film or music industry, the film once made continues to generate income long after the release, made possible through selling various broadcasting rights to TV or the media other than the cinema for which the film had originally been produced.

The first thing to establish in formulating a strategy for business in the Covid-19 world is to look for alternative processes through which the profit could be generated like cybersecurity, risk management, supply-chain reassessment, travel security, continuity plans, policies against disinformation and confusion.
For example,  in the selling of a product at Amazon or Flipkart, just following the retail delivery of the product is not sufficient, the business model must enforce the parameters to make hygienic delivery of the product possible while lowering the labour cost of manufacturing. It requires additional data about customer buying patterns like whether the user lives in Covid containment area, is he a frequent traveller? or does he have any health issues? which we would see later could be assessed from crowdsourcing pool.

In the production, dependence on robotic control to manufacture products. As another example, the software giant like Microsoft can cooperate to offer their services topped with the services offered by the health sector to protect the supply chain and the end consumer as well.
These days, everything is on the cloud, and to access the cloud requires asset management which can be based on the following factor, depth of disruption- by itself, it means how long would the effect of the technical staff remaining away from work or continuing with work from home last?

Effective Strategies

One of the effective strategies could be to divide the team into two halves, one the red team and the other the blue, both opting for a dress code so that there is no confusion during the implementation of the strategy. The red team can work on odd-numbered days while the blue team could operate on even days. We are using game theory whereby the rational choices made by red team depend upon those choices made by the blue one and vice-versa.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is another business model in which a common pool is created for businesses to share their expertise and resources. To make effective decisions, the businesses thus could utilize the services of other businesses which might not be in the direct competition. The White-cup campaign launched by Starbucks to encourage users to decorate their cups is a step in the direction of crowdsourcing. On other occasions, amid the Covid-19 the people might prefer to stay home so the shoes could be designed in such a way that they bestow more comfort on the consumer while cutting down the quality costs of the material.

The tech giants like Google can crowdfund the other businesses in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to affect them in becoming more intelligent.
Launching the drive for the virtual offices at the home of the employees could indeed turn a valuable tactic in the long run. By defining the new normal for the employees where they can overcome the need to commute to the office could turn the tables on the pandemic. Wherever necessary, the workload that an employee can carry without any intervention should be delegated for home. We can expect the pandemic to end as soon as two years from now so the companies must prepare for the post-Covid phase as well.
As we have seen thus far, customer engagement as a part of business strategy in the times of Covid-19 is crucial. Just offering the discounts on spending levels is no longer a viable option, instead, encourage customers to participate in keeping the brand loyalty a top priority.

Marketing and Promotional

As far the marketing and promotional activities are concerned, the business house should encourage the subscription program for the customers to keep coming back, but it should be well targeted by the data taken from the shared resources pool with the other like-minded businesses.

Developing online forums

The business should develop online forums where to disseminate knowledge to the customers about the product so that they could use the product hygienically. The knowledge is power and the effective usage of knowledge through data-warehousing and data mining could result in better product delivery, production and pricing. The knowledge in the form of content should be more personalized to each user.