The pandemic has created some unprecedented challenges for businesses, and executives are spinning their wheels to make sense of our new reality. Crowe recently released Part II of its planned three-part Business Challenges Survey to get a sense of the biggest concerns C-suite executives, corporate board members, and other organizational leaders are experiencing at this phase of the pandemic. To dig into the survey findings, we caught up with Ann Lathrop, Chief Marketing Officer at Crowe.
Consulting: What prompted Crowe to conduct this research in the first place?
Lathrop: I think this kind of information we're finding is really allowing us to have rich conversations with our clients and prospects. In the middle of a pandemic when there's complete uncertainty, people are hungry for knowledge of what is going on in the market, you know, what is happening to people like me? We felt like we had a unique opportunity to survey our clients and provide some insights to all of them, and to be able to share that, as well as create rich conversations that we can have in ways that we can help with what everyone is going through.
Consulting: What is your reading of the overall executive sentiment at this stage of the pandemic compared to the first survey?
Lathrop: Uncertainty continues to be the norm, and I think what we're seeing is executives feel much more confident in their own organization to come through this pandemic than they do in the overall economy, or from the government. I think for all of us, we know our own organization, and if you have a strong tie to the culture, and to the strategy, and to the deliberate actions that are taking, I think you just have a greater comfort and you feel better about your organization, while maybe the bigger, broader economy, just seems much more scary.
Consulting: What surprised you the most about the findings?
Lathrop: You can really see it from phase one to phase two, and so I don't know that it was a surprise, but this understanding that this is going to last a long time. And so I think in the report there was a lot more belief that 'yep I'm going to take a revenue hit, but by Q3 Q4, we're going to be coming out of this, it's going to be fine.' And you really saw in Phase 2 the 'oh wow, this is going to be here for a while.' So I don't know if that surprises, but it was definitely confirmed from the data.
Consulting: Do you expect the answers in the next version of this survey to be reflective of the situation on the ground at the time regarding COVID?
Lathrop: I think it will be related to COVID, but I also think it's going to be the elections. I think we started to see the election come in at the end of the second wave of the report where it was ticking up, you know, even taking over concerns about the economy. So I would anticipate that in this third wave you're really gonna see the impact of COVID government stimulus either moving forward, or not, and then the election. I think regardless of who wins you're gonna see some uncertainty there.
Consulting: What are some of the unique challenges that public sector employees are facing during this time?
Lathrop: It's kind of interesting, I have a unique background where I was right around 2000 I was City Controller for the City of Indianapolis. So I have a little insight. I think the big thing for government is their revenue streams lag. If you think about all the revenue streams that governments, especially in state local governments are dealing with: food and beverage taxes income taxes, casino taxes, those types of things shut down, so they're starting to really feel how that is going to now impact what they can do for the public. And if you think about anything that the government sector folks do, their charge is to take care of the population, and even more so those that are severely impacted by things like an economic downturn.
Consulting: What sort of things are companies doing to address these concerns raised in the survey?
Lathrop: I think forecasting is going to be huge, not just in the public sector but across the board, it would be, for instance, tax planning situations, so, thinking about when is the next time you need to raise capital, what are the impacts of the various tax strategies. Another thing is thinking about your supply chain and its resiliency; a lot of companies found that their supply chain wasn't very resilient when COVID hit. And so I think they're going to be really looking at how do you streamline your supply chain, but also making sure that you have redundancy and how do you do that in a cost effective way. I think a difference that you saw between phase one and phase two was you were starting to see people reducing some jobs. I also think with the retooling of your job force and the fact that everybody went to remote work, the investments in technology have been quite high, but with that comes the concerns of cybersecurity. So I think those are some of the areas that people are really focused on right now.
Consulting: What do you see as some of the big opportunities from a consulting standpoint?
Lathrop: Tax, hands down. Right now there are a lot of opportunities to really think about at the intersection of the regulations that are going on right now and tax policy. Clearly again, supply chain, cash flow projections, helping people think about how they're going to grow revenue and not just cut expenses. Those are some big areas. I also think cyber. People are going to be working remote for a long time, and multiple studies say that a lot of people would prefer to just stay home, even after the pandemic. So thinking about your cyber related concerns.
Consulting: What do you see as a glimmer of hope or a bright spot out of this report?
Lathrop: I think that people and companies have shown that they want to invest in their people. And I think with that will come, a level of loyalty from employees, because they're feeling cared for. I think the investments in technology will allow a streamlined workforce to work more efficiently. I also think collaboration. In some ways I think many of us thought the best way to collaborate with somebody was to get in a room, and now it's on teams and Zoom calls and finding that you can be just as productive, or more. So I think those are some glimmers of hope that we're seeing that people, first and foremost care about their employees, and really want to make sure that they can be productive in a remote workforce.
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