I know I was certainly impressed ...

If you’re living in Melbourne at the moment, stage 4 restrictions are like groundhog day and very rarely present interesting moments.  But one presented itself to me one Friday morning, whilst I was sitting with my son and he was regaling me with a list of things he wanted to purchase as he often does.  That certainly wasn’t the interesting moment, that happens all the time.  What followed was.

Before I proceed, let me preface this by saying that, since the pandemic, I’ve seen the heartache and pain that a lot of business owners have gone through.  Some being forced to close their doors whilst others being forced to challenge themselves like never before to think outside the box to survive.  Some have done an amazingly impressive job and some haven’t been able to adjust as effectively.  But boy are they all giving it a red hot go!

So back to my Friday morning, and my son stumbling upon the “Let’s go Pikachu” Nintendo switch game at JB HiFi that he had been saving his little heart out for.  And he’d worked really hard to get here, and so I proceeded to confirm that we will order the game now, but that he would have to wait until it was delivered, and once again had to go through the motions that given the pandemic, we would need to be patient and wait a few days for it to arrive.  Like so many times before, he agreed not really listening to me and expecting it to arrive any moment now.

As I got to the checkout, to my surprise (and gratitude … the “when is it arriving” game is getting old) JB HiFi were offering a “JB Store to door” option.  Where if you order by 12pm, it will be delivered by a JB team member by 5pm.  The best part, this service was only $5.  With the other options being, $1.99 untracked 5 day delivery, $4.99 Australia Post e-parcel 5 day delivery, or $5.99 express 2 day delivery.  To me it was a no brainer!

So order in, within 2 hours, Isaac was happily playing Let’s go Pikachu, and I had a great quiet moment to myself. 

I am so incredibly impressed with JB HiFi, and not because we were able to get our item fast and my son off my back, but because they had hit the nail on the head when it came to redirecting their human resources to improve customer experiences at a time, when customer experiences have been challenged. 

They got it!  They understood very clearly what to do with the opportunities presented to them.  Through the government support packages and funding, to keeping staff in jobs, maintaining efficiencies and removing the challenge, to create opportunity.

As business owners, this redirection is the perfect response to this pandemic.  It downgrades the severity of it, and places businesses like this ahead of it.  Efficiencies are key here to getting through this, and wow, what a great display.

I was challenged the other day in a Facebook group as to why cashflow forecasting or any forecasting during a pandemic, when there seemed to be little or no money around, was even important … this is why!!  Survival and opportunity creation come from knowing what you have, how to work with it under varying situations, and what impact it can make.

Here is your why!