Tag: business continuity

The oil and gas industry are no stranger to supply and demand shocks, having faced more than a dozen such blows over the course of the past four decades. Most of the supply side blows were the result of sudden supply pullbacks in reaction to geopolitical unrest.

While the power of face-to-face, physical sessions remains indisputable, COVID-19 has called for a ‘new normal’ where Zoom meetings and WhatsApp calls are the order of the day. All sectors of society have been impacted, including intermediaries who have had to quickly digitally mobilise to be there for their clients in a time when they’re needed most.

For many enterprises, their siloed, traditional Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems are proving to be their Achilles’ heel when trying to operate in unprecedented circumstances, preventing business continuity and resilience.

With proven business benefits for adopting cloud computing, the prediction of the global marketing intelligence firm, International Data Corporation (IDC) that 90 percent of businesses will use multiple cloud services and platforms by 2020, comes as no surprise.

The scale of the national COVID-19 lockdown is unprecedented in living memory. The repercussions – personal, professional, national and international – will reverberate for years to come. As entrepreneurs, we need to be making the right decisions for right now to ensure that our businesses and our people’s livelihoods do not become another casualty of the virus.

With President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing a phased lifting of the lockdown commencing 1 May, many business owners and managers are starting to prepare for the safe return of workers to the workplace. We put a number of business continuity contingency plans into action well ahead of the lockdown.

The scale of the national COVID-19 lockdown is unprecedented in living memory. The repercussions – personal, professional, national and international – will reverberate for years to come. As entrepreneurs, we need to be making the right decisions for right now to ensure that our businesses and our people’s livelihoods do not become another casualty of the virus.

The global economy has been disrupted severely by the outbreak of the coronavirus, also referred to as COVID-19. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the virus originated in the city of Wuhan in the province of Hubei, in China around December 2019.

Read our exclusive cover story titled COVID-19 | HOW TO SURVIVE FROM CRISIS TO CONTINUITY? by Michael Davies, CEO, ContinuitySA, as well a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the April/May 2020 edition of BusinessBrief.

An interview with Parmi Natesan, CEO, The Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoDSA), and Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult, discussing how boards need to take the lead in steering their organisations through crisis brought about by COVID-19.