The global spread of COVID-19 is an incredibly challenging and worrying time for all of us. The loss of life is already significant, and its spread continues. Many countries around the world are in some form of restricted movement or lockdown.

From a commercial point of view, this has driven significant and rapid change, and in many cases, on a daily basis. Consumer goods and pharmaceutical companies, specifically, have adapted and changed to keep their supply chains and route to market in operation, ensuring we all have the necessary food and medicine. This has led to a mixture of frontline workers adapting their practices to stay safe and keep working, and back office or non-frontline staff moving to home working.

As Route to Market (RtM) and Supply Chain experts, at Enchange we are advising all our clients to do two things.

• Firstly, adapt your current practices to keep the factories working, the deliveries going, and the orders being taken.
• Secondly, use the vital down time/ home working for certain team members to make the organisation leaner, faster, wiser and stronger. In other words, make yourself better able to deal with the challenges of today as well as being able to gain competitive advantage when the restrictions are lifted, most likely into a new world order of some description.

This leads to the obvious question, what can I do to Improve my Route to Market or Sales Operations, while many of my team members are working from home?

To address the current extraordinary challenges that we face, I suggest that you use the remote working time to step back for a moment, and question each area of your current RtM, considering the current restrictions and the likely new normal.

It might be an idea to structure your thinking around a framework you are comfortable with, feel free to use our 20 Steps to Route to Market Excellence model. You can find out more on our website or through my blog, where I take you through each step.

To get you started, I have also provided a list of questions you could use, to allow you to review current RtM performance post COVID-19.

The list is by no means exhaustive but does show a level of detail required and possible, while working remotely, and leveraging the wide array of data, tools, systems, applications, technology, and people, at our disposal. You can ask (and answer) these, and your own questions using the resources of your team and organisation.

I understand that many of you are moving from crisis meeting to crisis meeting trying to get used to the new normal. You may be asking, when will I get the time to ask these questions never mind answer them. My challenge back is threefold.

• Firstly, are all your RtM team at full capacity?
• Secondly, can you afford not to do this analysis and prepare for the new normal?
• Thirdly, if you are too busy, get help! Out of the ashes of this global pandemic, some new phoenixes will rise.

I hope you find this useful and your views and comments are welcome. If you need more specific assistance or help during these challenging times, please reach out to me directly.