How to rise above order farm?

Businesses in Nepal are yet to grow exponentially in their respective industry. Most of them are struggling to find the sustainable business model to support in crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. Such pandemics are completely unprecedented and no businesses were prepared enough to strike a balance in this difficult time. So, how to rise again for sustainable growth?

Revenue remains at the core of any profit-motive business. They plan, organize and put every revenue channel in order to streamline business process to catch more clients, sign-off more contracts, rightfully deliver it with minimum financial damage and ultimately drive everything to maximize profit. This is a regular business on the go.

Maintaining reasonable cash-flow in the business plays more critical role than to make larger profit margin before it is realized. A consistent revenue enables approximately equal amount of cash-flow despite having variation in profit margin. This situation at least provides a little extra runtime for the business to sustain in the critical time like this. 

But, in contrary, it becomes extremely difficult for businesses to maintain their revenue with a bearable fluctuation while every other sector, industry, suppliers and customers are hit by the pandemic. It is even worse to those who are reliant to their standard format of revenue model. Small economies, like ours are the accumulation of similar mindsets and business model, where they stay happy for what they are earning and maintaining their financial well-being, which are completely dependent in external environment to generate orders.

The easy excuse to make would be, ‘the situation is not favorable for business’. One should accept the reality as the situation is under no one’s control. Every business is suffering and so do we. Who would pass order when no one is really earning.

However, smart businesses think a little ahead and start diversifying the revenue model. The truth is, when one door gets closed, a lot more opens. But, are we building a business that can rise above order farms?

Order farm, basically means here the dependency of business revenue solely upon the orders they receive organically in a certain frequency. Based upon their existence in market, network and business relations, excessive demand and whatsoever marketing effort to maintain their average sales target throughout the year.

And, the point I am trying to raise here is, are businesses prepared to expect unprecedented time and be ready to capitalize the opportunity with a minimum dent in annual sales target? How to rise again? In a good note, could there be a diversification of revenue model keeping the regular operation more or less in similar pace and shape, that would help business to still achieve exponential growth in crisis?

Yes, probably this thought is new and unrealistic but extremely relevant to current state of pandemic. Yes, if we had a little thoughts and preparation rising above our organic order processing farm, this pandemic would have been a real opportunity for better cash inflows. 

Every business, irrespective of being in any industry or sector, there could be an outlier. Doing the same thing by twisting the process or channel would bring complete different result. And, this is what we are largely missing for this pandemic. So, how to rise by diversification of revenue model could be good move.

Whether, you call it Out-of-the-box Idea, Plan-B, Disruption, Business Innovation or Change Management, we are supposed to rise against the pre-existent common, an Order Farm.

TheSquare is no different than other agencies and badly hit by the pandemic. However, we have quickly understood the problems and developing system and channel to thrive soon. And, we are also helping our clients to realize it as soon as possible to act upon. You can also ask for a quick consultation, how we can grow together before it’s too late. 

Cheers.