By Brett Kelly, CEO of Kelly+Partners Ltd accounting group

I believe business leaders need to take quick and hard decisions to put their companies back on track after hibernation during the COVID-19 crisis.

While hibernation has been very challenging for both employees and leaders, it is in the transition back to normal operations that leaders need to stand up and take hard decisions about how their companies will recover or just simply survive.

Employees and other stakeholders in organisations want and need forthright decision making with a clear path forward for them and their companies. The time is ripe for leaders to step up to the plate and articulate what that path will look like.

I see a range of leaders making the tough decisions already about the future, with permanent reductions in head counts and the closure of outlets and accounts with clients that were marginally profitable or loss making.

Kelly+Partners’ 44 partners have used the time in hibernation to digitise many processes and improve the digital IQ of all 250 team members across our network of 15 office locations in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong and Auckland.

Technology is changing every industry and service companies need to ensure they are at the leading edge to ensure they are more efficient in dealing with clients to ensure their relationships continue to evolve positively and profitably post-crisis.

Competition in the recovering economy will be more ruthless as companies seek to quickly lift revenue and profitability and leaders will need to shape their organisations to be nimble in what will be a race to gain dominance in market sectors.

Kelly+Partners and other companies have successfully reduced the cost of accommodating team members by using more flexible working arrangements, with hybrid arrangements like more work from home.

The more flexible working arrangements have contributed to lowering companies’ cost bases, and has been welcomed by men and women who want to spend more time at home with their children and avoid time-wasting commutes.

We have found many leaders have woken up to the fact that leasing expensive CBD office space is an unnecessary expense, especially when team members can work just as efficiently at home.

Many projects that have had long lead times and large budgets, like computer system upgrades, had been fast-tracked at a lower cost to meet the challenge of the virus and this could be a model for the future.

Often we have seen clients’ project timetables and budgets blow-out as there were no hard deadlines like we have seen in the last two months, but in future we expect a new discipline to be imposed on delivery.

The expense of travel has also been slashed during the crisis and we expect Zoom. MS Teams and Skype meetings will become more common, as time and money is being saved through the digital platforms.

We have found that participants cut to the chase quicker in video meetings and actions identified, in contrast to office meetings which can meander and reach no meaningful conclusion.

Like many other companies, Kelly+Partners has culled our number and cost of consultants and suppliers as part of its re-engineering, placing more responsibility on internal teams who have often outsourced projects that were hard, time consuming or boring.

Many leaders should expect their own employees to fulfil these outsourced tasks to save time and money.