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Considering The Potential Business Impacts Covid 19 Outbreak
Considering The Potential Business Impacts Covid 19 Outbreak
potential business
impacts of the
COVID-19 outbreak
14 March 2020
available –
available – available –
June 2021
June 2021 June 2021
Protect your people and plan your workforce Maintain business continuity and protect your Provide clarity to employees and stakeholders
supply chain and enable business continuity
❏ Have you identified the critical work which delivers your P&L, the ❏ Have requirements of key suppliers, such as Facilities Management ❏ Have you created an internal and external stakeholder map for key
workforce that do this and the capacity of the organisation to move and IT service providers, been reviewed in light of any requirements communications (considering staff, customers, suppliers, regulators,
labour to sustain those critical activities? that may change during a pandemic period (e.g. increased cleaning etc)?
❏ Do you have full visibility of your people (geography, nationality, visa, regimes)?
etc.) and the right processes and systems in place to track and move ❏ Do you have a clear communications strategy that can be
your workforce, where required, as well as the legal / tax implications ❏ Have you liaised with key third parties to ensure they will be able to implemented in a crisis to protect your reputation and maintain the
of doing so? continue to deliver desired service levels during the coming period? trust of your stakeholders?
❏ Do you have a system in place to monitor changing laws and ❏ Are you monitoring exposure trends and restrictions against your ❏ How are you communicating with your employees?
regulations (e.g. travel restrictions) affecting your workforce? supply chain? ❏ How are you keeping employees regularly informed about the latest
❏ Have you completed workforce profiling to understand where work ❏ Have you performed an operational risk assessment and considered updates and guidance?
levels are likely to decrease or increase due to impact? the impact of disruptions on critical business functions? ❏ How are you providing reassurance and consistent messaging to all
❏ How can you enable flexible / remote working arrangements in the
event of quarantine and do you have the necessary infrastructure in ❏ Do you have visibility of critical supply chain parts and data to staff and showing a duty of care?
place? properly assess the potential damage and create immediate plans? ❏ How are your crisis communications aligned with your organisation’s
❏ Is a comprehensive set of people policies in place that address the ❏ Do you have any third party single points of failure? culture and communications requirements?
risks identified by your scenario planning and any local, legal or ❏ Have you performed a risk assessment across all supply chain tiers? ❏ How can best practice approaches be tailored to suit your
regulatory requirements? Have you considered using machine learning to find patterns that can organisation?
❏ Have you reviewed your HR policies to understand where risks are be indicators of risk - or opportunity?
exacerbated / mitigated and the extent to which this supports /
undermines the proposed response (e.g. flexible working, ❏ Have you evaluated strategies for alternative sourcing, including the
immigration, travel, and other relevant policies and regulations)? impact of tariffs to cost?
❏ Have you put risk mitigation around employees working whilst ill and ❏ Do you have a communications strategy in place for key supply chain
causing further spread by considering the ability to enforce policy stakeholders?
changes quickly? ❏ Have you activated product redesign/material certification resources?
❏ Do you have a strategy to manage any defined benefit
pension plans, as stock market and bond yield falls will have ❏ Have you conducted scenario planning exercises to understand the
led to increased deficits at the same time that trustees and operational implications, both financial and non-financial, of various
regulators are under increasing pressure for cash funding? scenarios?
COVID-19 - Response Considerations 14 March 2020
PwC 6
Setting up your COVID-19 response: considerations (2)
Gain insight and assess your exposure to risk Balance customer care with commercial priorities Join-up efforts on a cross functional basis to
ensure business continuity and resilience
❏ Do you understand how an affected country/region might impact the ❏ Have you updated your sales and demand planning strategy, ❏ Do you need to financially or operationally restructure your business
commercial performance of your industry, your business, or that of including assessing changes in customer behaviour (e.g. buyer to reduce risk and protect value?
your suppliers? habits)? ❏ Have you updated your working capital plans and forecasts?
❏ Do you understand the potential impact of a global or country-specific
slowdown, combined with Brexit, on your business? ❏ Have you formed a coherent customer communications plan? ❏ What contractual options are available to you as the customer, or
❏ Are you able to access robust data insights to underpin key decisions ❏ Does your plan help to preserve and enhance customer loyalty? could be used against you as the supplier?
that you need to make? ❏ How does your health and safety plan extend to customers? ❏ What contractual levers do you have available to suspend,
❏ Do you have the time and skills to digest and analyse existing data ❏ Do your policies reflect the need to protect both your customer and terminate or change the terms of supply (e.g. invoking force
sources in new ways to enable decision making? commercial interests (e.g. updating policies to be flexible on majeure provisions, termination provisions and step-in rights)?
❏ Are you able to identify new data sources that may be required? cancellations and changes, rationing products with insufficient stock ❏ What access do you have to emergency funding or increased
❏ Are you able to rapidly automate data capture processes for new data sales to top customers)? production funding needs?
sources?
❏ Have you evaluated your competitive position under the new ❏ Have you considered the tax and regulatory implications of moving
❏ Can you efficiently blend datasets to reveal insights?
environment, identifying both risks and opportunities? people to alternative locations? What systems and processes do
❏ Do you have the skills and experience to manage sensitive data you have in place to monitor movement of your employees?
responsibly? ❏ Have you identified and created an action plan against the core
❏ Do you have models that answer your questions or issues, including marketing and sales priority areas (including inventory planning, ❏ What insurance policies and access to emergency insurance do
challenging and validating data and model assumptions? pricing strategy and discounting)? you have in relation to your scenarios (e.g. notifiable disease
❏ Can you innovate and invest in available sales channels (e.g. online implications)?
vs in-store)? ❏ What technology infrastructure/resilience capabilities do you have?
❏ Can your IT infrastructure support extensive remote access
demands?
❏ How are you securing and maintaining your IT systems and data?
Have you assessed whether the changes in the IT environment
would increase the risk of a cyber attack?
❏ What are your triggers for making disclosures to the markets?
❏ Have you considered the personal and corporate tax and regulatory
COVID-19 - Response Considerations implications? 14 March 2020
PwC 7
We can work alongside you to tackle the challenges you face in
responding to COVID-19
Crisis response and • Establish a crisis response structure with established workstreams, clear responsibilities and accountabilities.
management • Develop likely and reasonable worst case scenarios and their potential impact, to support crisis and response planning.
Workforce • Assess potential impact and develop options Operations and supply • Perform an operational risk assessment and
to identify and move labour with the key skills to chain consider and plan for the impact of disruption on
support the P&L of the organisation. critical business functions.
• Proactively manage where, when and how • Understand your COVID-19 supply chain risks
disruption will impact the availability and and impacts, including third party suppliers.
effective utilisation of skills in the business.
Communications strategy • Develop a rapid communications plan and Focus on data • Identify data needs and develop protocols for
approach to build and maintain trust and data extraction, preparation and analysis.
reputation during the crisis for key stakeholders. • Model the impact of scenarios on industry
• Tailor best practice templates and sector or business-level commercial
communications materials such as emails, performance, and stress test commercial
FAQs and intranet. revenues against downside economic scenarios.
Customers and revenue • Revise your sales strategy to deal with Head office functions Legal, IT, Commercial and Insurance: review
evolving customer behaviours and competitive existing insurance coverage, IT infrastructure
and resilience, force majeure, contract clauses.
environment (risks and opportunities). Finance, Treasury and Tax: financing,
• Prioritise actions to protect customer restructuring and cash-flow.
relationships and commercial interests. Investor Relations: market disclosure.
• Model customer behavioural change.
02 Prioritise by assessing the impact and likelihood to inform allocation of effort and resource.
We will facilitate the consideration of mitigating actions and preparedness plans: Tailoring our
1. Identify actions to mitigate risks. approach
2. Where risks cannot be mitigated, consider preparedness activities. This may be linked to crisis management, We recognise that clients are all in
pandemic and BCM plans. different states of readiness and so,
3. Agree clear owners for the risks identified, and key actions that must happen now. for some clients, the workshop is
As part of this discussion, we will also consider triggers that will require decisions to be escalated to the senior used to review and challenge both
03 decision-making team (e.g. Crisis Management Team or the Board). their scenarios and existing plans.
• Labour availability along the supply chain. • Use modelling to aid decision making and identify opportunities • Dynamic dashboards. We have rapidly built dynamic dashboards
• Volatile demand caused by panic buying. for labour, logistics, cost, service and flexibility improvements as to track and monitor supply and network risks.
well as understand direct and indirect tax implications. • Warehousing optimisation - projects to allow sites to operate in
• Critical service providers - understanding their availability and
the ability of platforms to remain at an acceptable level of • Identify supply constraint remediation levers and validate them excess stock/lower labour scenarios.
operation. (e.g. enable alternate suppliers, secure overtime or expedited • Analysis of lead time and critical inventories to maximise
freight) and cost alternative supply chains. customer service levels on critical products.
• Scarcity of critical parts or ingredients to support continued
manufacturing. • Stand-up a ‘situation room’ where mitigations can be • Resilience assessments of critical third party service
coordinated. providers and suppliers, implementing mitigation/recovery plans.
• Understanding availability and constraints of supplies.
• Communicate regularly with supply chain stakeholders and • Provision of augmented resources to deal with immediate
• Defining supply priorities of critical products. establish closed-loop communication protocols for sensitive critical tasks.
• Routing products globally, whilst avoiding closed markets issues.
and considering increased security and screening. • Build a tiered factual base of supply, establishing what's
• Inventory issues disrupting supply model due to a slowdown in available and constrained, and set the mechanism to regularly
global supply chains. update the data.
• Loss resolution - understanding and getting a fair and • Understand the impact that delays could have on
equitable result. supply/production lead-times, and consider your inventory position.
• Review how border requirements differ for alternative shipment
routes.
• Insurance claims - review and implement actions.
• Use technology aided re-tendering to appoint new suppliers.
Illustrative roles we often provide on crisis projects We can provide local resources, insights and knowledge from the
locations that matter to you
Crisis strategy guidance and/or
quality assurance
5,600 276,005
people people worldwide
Workstream lead(s)
(e.g. communications, supply chain,
employment policy, data and analytics,
tax, legal, restructuring, immigration
and wellbeing, etc.)
22 12 736 157
offices countries offices countries
Surge capacity
Including managed service capabilities
for critical services
Connecting private sector global Communicating with health workers during Providing key information to combat a
conglomerates to the public sector and a virus outbreak potential pandemic
NGOs in a health crisis In the wake of a prolific virus outbreak, a government client A critical component of an effective response to a health
During an international health outbreak, a private sector needed to rapidly reach out to its 270,000 health workers crisis is to have accurate epidemiology information for use
group of global companies formed together with public across the country. This work was part of the '100 Day by the scientific community and the Ministry of Health. In
sector and NGOs to act as a platform to receive updates, Plan' engagement to assess the current Ministry of Health responding to a potential pandemic situation, our client
exchange information and share views in response to the strategy, and make recommendations for change. needed assistance with capturing and providing such key
crisis. Individual country groups were also formed and We worked directly with senior government officials and information. We designed the information capture and
worked closely with the public sector on the ground to developed the internal communications strategy and plans quality assurance processes from hospitals’ historic and
provide operational assistance to help combat the disease. for the Ministry of Health. We drafted content for internal contemporary records. We built a repository for the
communications on raising awareness of the virus in interrogation and archiving of information and supported
We provided technology-enabled support to maximise the non-affected hospitals. This was then expanded to inform the epidemiology community with ongoing analysis from
effectiveness of communications in a secure environment - all health workers of the risks of another outbreak that was the information set. We managed a daily reporting process
including allowing documents to be shared and discussed taking place on another continent whilst our team was on for the government, capturing new cases and providing
online, therefore facilitating communication and decision the ground. Through this work, we included a number of updates on existing cases by communicating with private
making at the highest level. new communication channels to help drive employees and public hospitals nationally.
online, including communication hotspots in sites across
the country. As a result, the government and global health agencies
were able to provide an effective response to the health
crisis and provide worldwide assessments as to the
likelihood of a pandemic situation emerging.
Achraf El Zaim Nadine Bassil Consumer Markets Government & Public Sector
Partner, Forensic Services Partner, Tax and Mobility Norma Taki Rami Nazer
achraf.elzaim@pwc.com nadine.bassil@pwc.com norma.taki@pwc.com rami.nazer@pwc.com
Lina Shadid Stephen Anderson Energy, Utilities & Resources Industrial Manufacturing & Services
Partner, Digital Health Partner, Strategy and Markets Neil o’Keeffe Imad Shahrouri
lina.shadid@pwc.com stephen.x.anderson@pwc.com neil.okeeffe@pwc.com imad.shahrouri@pwc.com
Matthew White Stephen Drake Family Business Private Equity & Sovereign
Partner, Business Resilience Partner, Mobility Services Adnan Zaidi Investment Funds
matthew.white@pwc.com stephen.drake@pwc.com adnan.zaidi@pwc.com Laurent Depolla
laurent.depolla@pwc.com
Melanie Butler Walid Tohme Financial Services
Partner, Global Crisis Centre, UK Partner, Heath Leader - Strategy& Mehyrar Ghazali Technology, Media &
melanie.butler@pwc.com walid.tohme@pwc.com mehyrar.ghazali@pwc.com Telecommunications
Bahjat Darwiche
Mo Farzadi Workforce
bahjat.darwichei@pwc.com
Partner, Business Restructuring David Suarez
mo.farzadi@pwc.com Partner, People & Organisation
David.suarez@pwc.com
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