Following the impact of coronavirus pandemic which has left businesses across the globe counting losses, Mitchell Elegbe, Founder and Group Managing Director at Interswitch has described it as a wake-up call on companies to take proactive measures to have a crisis management plan ahead of potential crisis to keep their businesses afloat.
He made this known during the WIMBOARD Institute Webinar tagged: “The role of a Board in Anticipating and Managing Crisis”, held recently. Speaking on what boards can do to anticipate crisis, Mitchell explained that a board takes a long-term view of the business and plans for seasons. Using the Interswitch Group as a case study, he disclosed that prior to the novel coronavirus disruption, Interswitch Group had developed a proactive crisis management plan that has enabled it navigate the business environment seamlessly to continue to offer top-notch services to its esteemed customers, during the pandemic. He disclosed that while it is true that the company did not envisage the coronavirus outbreak, its board was not caught unprepared by the impact of the pandemic. He explained that as far as the Interswitch Group’s board was concerned, the Group’s vision is captured as a landing zone and a well-defined plan was put in place. Not unmindful of multiple risks that had propensity to crystallise along the way, the board proactively set out to identify and activate triggers that would help achieve the vision and mitigate traps that could potentially have detrimental effect on the actualisation of the business’s vision.