Covid-19 adaptation: How some top executives altered strategy

The Covid-19 crisis has expedited change in the way companies do business. Some companies have moved faster in digitising their customer, supply-chain interactions and internal operations to deliver growth. 

Vaolah Amumpaire, the founder of Wena Hardware  
Our outlook for 2020 was to expand our market stake and sales into Kenya and Ghana because of the burgeoning infrastructural projects and construction trends in both countries.  We hoped by setting a footprint in more main markets, our revenues would increase. 
When we set up shop in Kenya at the beginning of the year, it coincided with the Covid-19 induced lockdown. 

This meant we couldn’t oversee most of our operations in Kenya and yet we hadn’t set up well. We realised this was going to be costly and decided to put a halt on expansion and remain more efficient with operations.

We cut costs through using Google hangouts for updates and WhatsAapp for instant updates.

 We also had to change business operations and leveraged on partnerships – with Jumia- to make more revenue.  Our partnership with Jumia improved on our customer retention and base and we were able to raise more revenue. 
 
Covid-19 also gave us an opportunity to expand our e- commerce platform digital space by focusing on the local clientele.  
Before the pandemic, we largely banked on the diaspora community to tap into potential clients. But this is changing because we are observing a steady increase of Ugandan clients to the website from about five engagements to 30 per day.

Ugandans have started appreciating online transactions to conduct business.  

Lessons
We have learnt that as a business, we need to set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for workers. With Covid-19, it sets a new precedence on how employee input is measured.
I also learnt that establishing my business online gave me comparative advantage over those with only physical businesses. I made a few changes to adapt to Covid -19 compared to other businesses struggling to shift online.
 
Anne Juuko, CEO of  Stanbic Bank
 Despite the difficult operating environment, Stanbic’s performance in this first half has shown the bank’s resilience and achieving the strategic objectives as set out in 2018 of creating the opportunity for Stanbic bank to venture into other non-banking services that would enhance value of products and services, provided to different stakeholders and increased shareholder value. 
 
At Stanbic, the customer is king. To continue with business under the current challenging environment, we offered credit relief programmes to businesses and personal customers tailored to suit their circumstances to minimise the impact the pandemic would have on their businesses. We also waived all charges on our digital banking platforms so that customers transacted free of charge.  
  
The most impacted sector has been the SMEs and Stanbic has been deliberate in its efforts to provide the necessary relief support to help them sustain their businesses. 

With a portfolio of over 40,000 SME clients, we encouraged all our SME customers whose incomes have been impacted as a result of Cpvid-19 to apply for a loan repayment holiday based on their circumstances. 

Over 60 per cent of the loans restructured in Stanbic’s portfolio have been SMEs and we shall continue to create further interventions to help business recover from the impact of the pandemic.

We have also lowered our Prime Lending Rate (PLR) twice during the period to 16 per cent which is one of the lowest PLRs of all active retail financial institutions in Uganda. Our aim is to ensure our customers can benefit from more affordable lending rates. 
 
These measures played a part in boosting our 2020 financial results. Our customer deposits grew by Shs1.1 trillion, a 26.6 per cent year on year growth. 

This growth was enabled by our strong client ecosystem engagement and simplifying client onboarding. Loans and advances increased by Shs661 billion, 24 per cent year on year growth registered across our varied client segments on working capital and term financing.  

Lessons
The pandemic has presented an opportunity for us to reshape the way we deliver services to our clients. As we start to see some economic recovery following the government’s recent measures to relax restrictions, Stanbic will focus its efforts on implementing initiatives to support the recovery of key sectors that were heavily impacted by the pandemic, especially the SME sector. 

We shall continue to accelerate our digitization agenda to ensure we continue to provide more innovative and efficient banking services to our clients.

Japheth Kawanguzi, Team Leader, The Innovation Village 
Our outlook for the year 2020 was going beyond Kampala because our operations have been mainly within. We have achieved it by expanding our community of entrepreneurs we are working with in Gulu, Kampala and Jinja.

The pandemic presented a difficult situation because a lot of the work we do depends on having to bring people into our spaces.

 When the lockdown came, we had to find other ways of supporting our communities of entrepreneurs. We had to shift 80 per cent of our programming online such that we can still remain in touch with them. But we also realised that Covid-19 presented a challenge that we as entrepreneurs had to solve.

We launched a Covid-19 Innovation challenge which brought together over 80 entrepreneurs to provide solutions to businesses during Covid-19.  One of those partnerships made sure that we support over 4,000 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to go online so they can continue doing business.

During Covid-19, we established Motiv Applied Tech hub in Bugolobi which has been a key output. Motiv deals more with applied technology, bringing together people dealing in film, fashion, media, entertainment, artists. That brings our work to the everyday person. 

The Motiv idea was in the pipeline, but the size and scale of the facility was inspired by Covid-19 to bring the informal sector on board.  And we have been able to create 500,000 masks for the government and created over 300 jobs for the young people.

Lessons
Despite Covid-19, it has been a very successful year and the lessons have been very many! Everyone is still struggling with Covid-19. For entrepreneurs, they have proven they can be a big solution to Covid-19. For instance, the Medical Concierge Group has proven that they can support people through test kits through remote health solutions such as immunisation. It has re- affirmed the positive contribution entrepreneurs can play if given a chance.

Changing strategy

Redefining business model
Cafe Javas, a restaurant chain based in Kampala, altered its business model during the lockdown in order to adapt to the pandemic.
While some companies rushed to lay off workers, some redeployed them. ‘‘We moved most of our waiters into the delivery [business], in order not to lay them off,’’ Cafe Javas marketing manager Illona Ndagire told the BBC in July this year.
‘‘They were able to deliver meals to customers using bikes,’’ Ndagire said.