ASSIGNMENT

On

“What challenges companies faced in their business activities due to the pandemic
hit? & how they cope up with the challenge?”
With outbreak of COVID-19 last year in Wuhan China, the Virus has affected almost all parts of
the world and all business industries and sectors of development. Tobacco industry is also
affected due to its healthy problems associated with the consumption of tobacco like corona lung
disease and cancers that are linked to have high risks to contact COVID-19. Though the big
tobacco companies Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco have stated that they have
not seen any significant decline in sales and still seem to be highly profitable. This is
understandable, because the crisis has a serious impact on all areas of people’s lives, endangers
livelihoods and leads to great psychological stress, which many people respond to with addictive
behavior.

Cigarettes are not considered to be essential consumer goods in most countries and therefore are
not included in national planning to ensure supply to the general public. As many small shops
selling food and essential products remain open, however, tobacco and e-cigarettes are still
accessible to consumers on a daily basis. There are some exceptions, where selling cigarettes has
been banned1 during national lockdown.

In March, as many governments began to lock down their populations, British American
Tobacco (BAT) began co-opting universal health messages. The sight of gloves, hand sanitizers
and masks amid piles of tobacco leaves has become the new normal.

Challenges

• Problem in Inventory Management & Supply Chain- Due to social distancing and to
follow the lockdown imposed by the govt. BAT faced a huge gap in Distribution &
Supply chain Management. In the month of April almost no stock in all the warehouses
all over in Bangladesh were neither got in or out for distribution. Thus huge stock of
BAT products piled up and increased the cost.
• Distributing in Cluster Stopped – In BAT cluster refers to a group of 7-8 retailers in a
particular place or area that sales their products. Each area can have a huge number of
clusters selling BAT products, depending the number of retailers they have enlisted.
When the pandemic hit distribution in clusters stopped due to lockdown.
• Increase sales target in the following months – As the stocks were not distributed among
the Clustered retailers and sales dropped to a huge percentage at the month of
April, with the following months they increased their sales target to balance the loss that
 occurred in the last of month.
• Lack of marketing insights: Company sales team can work in various ways. Some sales
representative work by selling their products to customers. In case of BAT the front line
sales representatives or Territory Officers gather market insights by visiting all their work
areas. But with the crisis situation they initially couldn’t gather any sort of marketing
insights due to the social distancing restrains.
• Unable to visit the field – With the crisis situation BAT send all of their infield employees
back to their home for the safety purpose. It surely ensured employees safety but their
given responsibilities, duties were affected badly.

Solutions

• To cope with the loss faced earlier in the crisis stage they increased their sales target by
3 times.
• Earlier on all of their data’s regarding market scenario, situation were analyzed
everyday by the Marketing insights & Reports given by the Sales rep. But now they
have started adopting the data science analysis & techniques where they are
constantly managing the market with the analysis of the previous data’s also with the
ones they are getting from the app.
• They recently started project management software automation where the software can
complete basic project management tasks and functions without your intervention.
No physical interaction is required here. The dealers can gain and share various
information’s through the app that they developed for them.
• Sales rep. is given training on a regular basis in terms of how to conduct their whole
business with the current scenario.
• Being in sales dept. we had to have market visits every day. But with the scenario as
it’s not possible , to make sure we don’t compromise our work at any cost BAT came
up with the project management software which in a way ensures our full
participation or to say attendance
• Apart from all of the stated solution to cope the challenges in business situation,
worldwide, the research for a Coronavirus vaccine is feverishly pursued. British
American Tobacco (BAT) claims to be able to produce large quantities of vaccine
 doses as early as June. BAT’s biotechnology subsidiary, Kentucky Bioprocessing
(KBP), is undertaking research on tobacco plants and claims to have already
achieved a breakthrough, but needs state support. The results of clinical tests are still
pending.

Tobacco companies offering assistance in the form of ventilators, gels, PPE and even
cash. They are even involved in trying to develop a vaccine. These have been gratefully
received by authorities struggling with a chronic lack of resources.

Tobacco Industry has been a vigorous industry which has received both positive and
negative comments from the world depending from which side the commenters looks at,
this is so because tobacco has been one of the main source of employment, GDP and
economic development on many countries for decades .

Certainly, all means to overcome the current crisis have to be welcomed. Societies
should use anything that now relieves the burden on health systems and advances
research.