Technology

Technology is key

Joel Blake OBE, founder and CEO of business data intelligence firm GFA Exchange, explains why technology is vital to bouncing back.

05 Jun 2020 . 2 min read

As an entrepreneur, walking into the valley of uncertainty can be a daunting experience. Coronavirus has been such a valley. But uncertainty is also the basis for making clarified decisions, which underpin our growth and innovative mindsets for solving problems.

As the founder of a fintech start-up, I also believe that technology will play a massive part in the way in which entrepreneurs will recover from the crisis. Technology can make processes and systems more automated and efficient so that customer value can be accelerated to feed the hunger of your target market.

Uncertainty is also the basis for making clarified decisions, which underpin our growth and innovative mindsets for solving problems

Joel Blake OBE

Founder and CEO, GFA Exchange

It’s like cooking a soup of disruption where your solution to a validated problem is the core ingredient, sprinkled with a touch of determination, a pinch of technology and a dose of luck to make it all taste OK.

Here are some other ingredients for you to digest:

C – Consistent: Be consistent in the value that you have always provided and be transparent about any changes to this with all your staff, customers and wider stakeholders.

L – Leverage: Be open to share and exchange resources with others. Leverage to manage costs and force change is not a bad thing, so long as there is transparency and an agreed win-win outcome for all parties concerned.

E – Efficiency: What can you do to make processes, systems, business models, service and product delivery, among other things, more cost-effective?

A – Advantages: Take the time to look at your business through new lenses to identify new growth and revenue opportunities; research and evaluate the potential impact of these opportunities for the short, medium and long term.

R – Reality: They say cash is king or queen, which is true. But more importantly than that, where is your cash coming from over the next week, 90 days, six months?

We must accept that it is business as unusual, not usual, from here on in. So do reflect on why you must be CLEAR about coronavirus.

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