Surface Ripples

Cost of COVID

Many of us have started to feel the financial effects of COVID. By this I mean rising costs, resulting from two years of no business and companies now trying to recover. 

One recent example was a letter I received from a bank advising that the costs of sending money using their telephone banking centre were going to rise as the costs of maintaining said, telephone banking centre were increasing.

They explained that people were using phone banking less: this may be because people became much more used to using online banking services as call centres couldn’t be fully staffed at the height of COVID due to social distancing constraints, or because of other factors.

Whatever the case, with both the costs of recovery and events in Eastern Europe raising the general cost of living, we can expect to see rises from suppliers, stores and others whose services we use.

As businesses, we need to contain costs as much as possible, or we go out of business.  Business owners are now in a dilemma: raise prices and lose customers or hold prices as long as they can to keep business coming in and hope that things will, eventually, calm down.

How has your business been impacted? What have you been able to do to contain costs?

I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

Labels: Financial, Productivity, Strategy

posted by William Martin @ 16:56