Performance resilience

The right balance between short-term and long-term policies

As the director of a company or an organisation, your job is to keep the business healthy and continue seeking to create value. That’s true even when economic conditions are challenging. But how do you make sure you keep day-to-day risks in check while at the same time making the business resilient enough to cope with unforeseen circumstances?

Decisive action

Given what you know today, you may well have made some different decisions in the past few years, but it's that knowledge that determines what your organisation will look like tomorrow. When you're confronted by uncertainty, what counts is decisive action.

To successfully plan your path to recovery, you need to know what obstacles stand in the way. But the challenge is that the solution to your problem isn't always right there on the known path. It's often the issues you don't expect that cause the biggest problems.

The opportunities that transformation offers

Whatever change your organisation is facing, we are here to help you. Whether you need to optimise your business or reinvent it, we will work with you to unlock the opportunities offered by transformation. Together, we’ll implement changes that will make a difference to your organisation, your people, and society as a whole.

In our services, we make a clear distinction between the short term and the long term. Does keeping your business on its feet require rapid action or does it involve a transformation over a prolonged period of time?

The short term: financing/refinancing…

A lack of short-term or medium-term liquidity, worsening credit ratings, intense pressure from suppliers and financiers.... In a crisis, the interests of creditors, debtors, and the company may diverge, putting pressure on the relationship between the company and its stakeholders.

By restructuring the balance sheet and raising replacement financing or new financing, for example, companies can stabilise the crisis and maximise (shareholder) value.

...and effective cash management

Effective cash management comprises two key components: tools and processes. You need tools in order to get something done. A simple template in which the various business units, divisions, or subsidiaries can flesh out the forecast in a consistent manner so as to arrive at a consolidated view.

You also need to have a process that leads to a solid forecast. In many cases, a company does have certain tools in place but the process side of that liquidity forecast is still too much of a “finance thing”. Controllers, for example, may put something together without properly involving the rest of the organisation and ensuring that everyone actually takes ownership of the forecast.

The long term: operational improvements

By splitting up business units, or in fact hiving them off or opting for an acquisition, companies can increase their value. But it’s then important to have a clear picture of the elements that actually create value.

Capabilities are more important than ever for the success of an acquisition. The likelihood of more value creation is greater if there’s a good match between the acquiring company and the target in terms of people's skills, company culture, existing technology, and processes ('the capabilities fit').

How we help our clients increase their operational resilience

More than anyone, we are able to help you strike the right balance between short-term and long-term policies. No matter what stage you're at in your transformation, PwC has the people to support you.

How we do that is unique. With a diverse team, we look at your situation from a variety of different angles. To do so, we bring together people with very different areas of expertise and backgrounds, and we combine their different perspectives, ingenuity, and passion with the latest technology so as to explore unexpected angles together. We call this the power of our community of solvers.

How do you transform into a resilient organisation?

Get a better grip on your transformation

To ensure that your organisation operates more efficiently and becomes more agile, it is important that your strategic activities are well linked to your business planning. In other words, it is important that the day-to-day running of your organisation contributes to your long-term goals.

Are you curious whether your organisation is well prepared for the challenges of the digital age? Want to know if your current transformation efforts are enough for success? Then go through the questions in our 'Transformation Maturity Profiler'. With this tool you can find out in minutes where you are doing well and where you may need to do more.