Even though COVID-19 continues to turn the world on its head, states across the country are beginning to reopen businesses and lift their stay-at-home orders. While our heroes on the frontlines remain the group who needs PPE the most, companies that are now returning to a new world need to consider how they are going to create a safe environment for their employees and patrons. Items like gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant cleaner will be essential for businesses to run and still prevent further spreading Coronavirus.
Businesses such as banks, laundromats, salons, and restaurants will need to consider sourcing items they’ve never had to before or in unprecedented quantities. So, what is a solid plan for these business owners to have a seamless transition into the new normal?
It starts with identifying the PPE you’ll need the most. For example, banks are going to need an astronomical amount of PPE as they have hundreds of thousands of people touching money and ATMs every single day. As physical locations reopen and states lift their stay-at-home orders, masks will be required for customers to mitigate the risk of potentially spreading the disease. Employees and customers are going to be more skeptical than ever to be in public spaces, so you’ll need to ensure that you’ve thought through having all of the protective measures in place to keep their health and safety as the number one priority.
Once you’ve identified your top needs, you’ll need to vet factory and vendor partners. The demand for these items will no longer be for just healthcare or food prep businesses, which will limit the available supply and capacity. This downtime for your business is the perfect time to begin the vetting process to ensure that you have multiple factory and vendor partners in your portfolio. As you build these relationships, you can start to set up a long-term plan with your partners to be able to fulfill your needs on a monthly, quarterly, and/or annual basis. PPE isn’t going away anytime soon, so building out that action plan with your supply chain partners will be imperative to protect your employees and customers moving forward.
Now that you have your supply chain partners in place, you have to consider how you’re going to manage to work with multiple partners on multiple orders. We have seen the pitfalls of businesses that try to manage their supply chain through Excel and email only, and not only is it not scalable, but it creates more headaches as you try to understand this new product offering. To be a business that is built to scale in a post-COVID-19 world, it’s necessary to have a digital backbone to support not just your PPE supply chain partners, but all of the supply chain participants across your business. Software like the Suuchi GRID allows you to access real-time updates quickly, communicate with the team in a centralized location, and collect valuable data to make more informed decisions and purchases as your business expands. An intuitive tech stack also puts you two steps ahead of the competition who didn’t utilize this time to invest in long-term tools to support their business.
Whether you utilize the Suuchi platform to source PPE, create a digital footprint of your supply chain or a combination of both, we are here to support your business as we emerge from this pandemic.
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