Bangalore and much of India's tier one and tier two cities have long evolved as a hub of IT excellence. Over the years, we have seen the growth and establishment of large corporates, both local and multinational. Many firms now specialize in core verticals like recruitment, digital marketing, software sales, software implementation, and Mobile apps development and so on. It is an ocean of big players. But this has spawned a large conglomerate of small and mid-sized businesses in the services sector, like catering, fast food take-a-ways, employee resume builders, employee verification services, job portals, office supplies, office renovation products, stationery supplies, office maintenance products and supplies and so on. In the 90s and earlier on, large corporates believed in sourcing the infrastructure items themselves. They would have a large repository of vendors and an entire internal department working on supplies, operations, and maintenance.
Our promise is to provide a friendly and efficient service to our customers with the majority of items delivered next day, by our own staff and delivery vehicles
They were quick to realize that this took a toll on their expenses and they started looking at vendors who could provide these services independently. This quite literally spawned a network of small businesses to cater to these requirements. The age of the small business sector began and soon it was a thriving business of furniture supplier, a/c and maintenance operators, office stationery suppliers, printers and IT peripherals outsourcing, pantry supplies and maintenance, corporate gifts providers, hiring process outsourcing and so on.
Collaboration is the key to working together to derive a mutual benefit. While small businesses need to up-sell their key skills to corporates and bag a good contract for themselves, corporates also benefit by utilizing these services, since they do not have to invest in space, resources, time and money. A classic example of a simple collaboration is pantry services and supplies. By outsourcing the pantry services operations to a vendor, the corporates gain by getting trending pantry products and benefit from the rich experience of a pantry services provider.
Bangalore, for example has many such vendors like Corporate Solutions, who have more than 20 years of experience in pantry design, upkeep and on-the-ground knowledge about trending confectionaries and beverages.
Small companies and corporates have thus been able to cut their operations cost, improve employee performance and focus on their goals better by outsourcing their requirements to various vendors in their niche segment.
As the virus hit the human populace in early 2020, the impact hit home - at the very heart of industries and commerce. While we struggled to cope with the horrible death and devastation of families, a slow painful truth slowly emerged. Families and businesses who lost their near and dear ones to COVID-19, also were facing penury, unemployment and financial losses, due to the rapid close-down of factories, corporates and other small-scale industries.
The need of the hour is to open up offices and companies and allow employees to trickle in for work, at least at reduced capacity. For one, this helps their team to return to the normalcy of office environment, instead of being cooped up in their homes - that are not designed to double up as office space. More on that, in a later article. The second benefit, which is at the heart of this article, is to kick-start the supply chain that keeps the corporates and small businesses working together.
Large stocks of inventories are perishing at warehouses of small business units. These vendors are incurring huge losses,that can be abated somewhat if at least 25% normalcy returns to their businesses. On the other side, corporates and companies that have invested heavily in office furniture, equipment and accessories could do well to re-start operations at reduced capacity at least, to avoid damage due to long months of closure. Printers, fax machines, conference room equipment, hardware devices and equipment need to be serviced and maintained regularly.
Rodents, mold, dirt and dust will slowly seep into the premises, if left unused for a long time. At such times, we realise the value of the office housekeeping staff and vendors who supply the cleaning products. Corporate Solutions, for example is keeping a keen eye on the cleaning product range and offers many product-combos to restart the operations.
With Diwali, Christmas and New year-round the corner, it is time to gear up to bring some festivities and cheer to the industry. Like other tragedies and pandemics in the past, we have to learn to come to terms with it and not allow the fabric of the industry to break apart.
This is the time that supplementary and complementary services and goods providers make good business. Corporate gifts are a huge high-employment industry. Many firms specialize in these activities. Corporate Solutions is already working with many small-scale gift providers and suppliers. Corporate Solutions is coming up with innovative gift packages to meet the COVID-19 challenges - like gift packs of herbal immunity boosters, hamper baskets of branded masks and sanitizers and so on. Employees, who are working from home and contributing to the company, should not be denied the fun of gifts that they are used to getting in the past years!
All companies, big or small should consider it as a social responsibility to reopen their offices in a phased manner, to boost the morale of employees and restart the operations of their vendors.
The virus has hit us hard. It is time to hit back, equally hard.