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‘Business continuity will be a matter of sustainability rather than immediate profitability’ : Ambrish Kumar

By Retail4Growth Team | May 04, 2020

In these testing Covid-19 times, businesses and individuals are going the extra mile to decimate the impact of the pandemic. In doing so, one critical problem companies are facing is managing business continuity. As organizations look to turn current challenges into a competitive advantage, business continuity plans are being tested and reworked every day given.

In an exclusive interview with Retail4Growth, Ambrish Kumar Founder of Logycode shares his take on way forward for the industry and best business strategies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19

Ambrish KumarBusiness Continuity 

Business continuity for us is the strategy, planning and execution of certain futuristic measures we take as an organization to ensure the business moves on steadily irrespective of the market conditions considering peak and low seasons, consumer demand fluctuations, risks, implicit threats, calamities and disasters, pandemics. We see business continuity not just on the grounds of revenue and turnover but also on the rationale of retaining a full house human resource. In view of the same, long term buffers to be created to ensure a steady income and employee retention even in times of catastrophes and mishaps.

Business continuity has definitely been hit for most industries and sectors not just within the country but across globally. Also, it is a fact that the impact is long term, and even for the strongest and cash-rich nations, sectors, and companies, business continuity will be a matter of sustainability for some time rather than immediate profitability. The prevailing situation is something that was not anticipated as the intensity and might of it is unparalleled since a century. The economic deceleration and the global recession underway ought to be tough for business continuity.    

Measures Adopted

The most significant measure that we took around two years back considering the need of the hour was to optimize the advantages of digitization and automation in the field of logistics, where it was lagging earlier in the whole ecosystem. We developed a cloud-based digital logistics platform that could automate most of the manually driven workflows of the logistics processes. We could develop and implement a portal by which the customers who are majorly logistics companies and freight forwarders whose work was labour intensive and involved heavy paperwork could manage the complete workflow remotely even while working from home. Within our organization, we ensured cost optimization and safety by asking our employees to work from home much before the lockdown started. Each employee is equipped with laptops, official mobile phones, internet access, cloud-based system accessible from any device, digital documents and fully automated processes, video conferencing and online meetings to ensure business continuity is not hindered due to lack of resources or communication gaps. We also strategized to focusing on and catering the products in demand during this situation, recovery of receivables, avoiding revenue leaks through minimal errors, and ensuring supply and demand gap is fulfilled.

Somehow it happened so that our working model was molded in such a way for a few years that it did not get severely impacted to the current scenario.

Role of Technology

Technology plays a vital part in business continuity as the need of the hour is to remotely carry out your business from wherever you are. For that automation and technology influx is inevitable. The impact is irredeemable where manual actions and physical presence is required.

Our core business currently is in the sector of logistics and supply chain which still follows an orthodox working model and is heavily manually driven. We have successfully managed to implement the LogYcode digital logistics portal through which the complete pre-requisites of the logistics cycle can be carried out remotely through the web application or the mobile app. LogYcode also has an unrivaled portal for air freight which is unique not just within India but globally offering an e-marketplace experience for air cargo. We are also underway developing portals for the various entities like ocean freight, inland transportation, warehousing, customs brokerage and so on for integrating the various stakeholders of the logistics ecosystem and creating a centralized single window digital gateway. The supply chain is one of the most inevitable sectors during such times of crisis and fully automated solutions will only help tackle and breakthrough this.   

Sustainability and Continuity

As mentioned before sustainability will be the focus of most of the companies for the near future whether the multinationals or the MSMEs. There is going to be a prolonged recession, the purchasing power of nations will deteriorate, the purchasing power parity of consumers will go down, debts will increase, payables will get delayed, receivables will get deferred, cash-flows will get affected as most of the industries and sectors are interlinked.

Our strategy is to ensure a steady business with thoughtful investments and divestments wherever required. We are focusing on market demand and catering to customer needs. We plan to be in line with our development of a centralized platform for logistics services as the customers would look forward to an automated mode of carrying out business, as the supply chain is at work.  

 

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