It has been talked about time and time again, how the abrupt arrival of the pandemic has led to the upheaval of the daily processes and the mass exodus of workers from a typical workplace.

In fact, in Singapore alone, 63 per cent of businesses in Singapore have been affected negatively by the pandemic, with industry challenges further exacerbated by periodic industry barriers such as manpower shortage and dynamic changes in consumer behaviour.

While the market is slowly recovering and more are pivoting digitally, we still see businesses plagued with the same challenges, especially those that choose to stick to old business planning processes.

With this, NJ Group has seen success in acknowledging how critical it is for a business to prioritise continuity planning, seizing relevant opportunities and staying vigilant in times of uncertainty.

Prioritise business continuity planning

Future planning is essential for every business to ensure survival in times of economic instability. This could entail business risk management, product development, and product innovation. Across industries, a common theme we are seeing is that businesses are infusing technology and fad trends into products as an innovation point.

Whether it is creating crypto food tech or claiming ‘healthier’ meals with plant-based options, players are trying to innovate their products to appeal to a wider range of customers. We see some businesses finding success in this while some are due to face more turbulence in their paths.

The problem with the latter is that innovation is an expensive and time-consuming process, and a failed innovation during this volatile period can cause a company to retrogress.

NJ Group launched Eagle this year in March to address how to maintain service quality and experience in our restaurant chains. Eagle is a web-based AI platform that collects, monitors and manages customer feedback in the service industry with minimal manpower.

This not only tackles service quality issues but with the power of automation technology, Eagle addresses current and future manpower crunch cycles that often occur in the F&B service industry. Our team recognised the long-standing issue of manpower shortage and how that often directly impacts the level of service quality that patrons experience.

Also Read: How barePack and &Repeat aim to reduce waste by introducing the circular approach to food packaging

This is why we thought of creating a platform that takes authentic and real-time comments from customers and uses AI to generate suggestions on how to make business processes better in just six seconds.

Be in the right place, at the right time and seize opportunities

While future planning helps chart out the next steps, unforeseen events can happen and we all saw how the pandemic took everyone by surprise. Even so, mapping out business goals ahead of time can help soften the blow and land companies in favourable market positions that offer new business opportunities when old revenue streams cease.

When a company is conscious of the changing climate, it can be of favour and be confident in implementing long-term sustainable strategies, instead of pursuing short-term gains to stay innovative and stay relevant.

NJ Group’s successful business planning allowed us to enjoy some advantages during the pandemic. We were at the right place and at the right time, two of our restaurants that were strategically placed in hotels were presented with the opportunity to supply food for people who were quarantined in the hotels or were on stay-home-notices.

NJ Group was able to maintain topline services with minimal compromise on the bottom line. We even managed to achieve a 20 per cent increase in sales revenue in the past year, in Cali outlets in Park Avenue Rochester and Citadines Balestier.

Fortunately, we were able to leverage the downtime presented by the pandemic to identify real problems that were previously overlooked and craft appropriate solutions to resolve them. In this period, we reached milestones like launching our own table reservation system, food delivery, menu management solutions and automation technologies like Eagle for our restaurants.

Leverage and keep up with research and development (R&D)

With robust plans in order, stable and resilient companies should also look deeper into investing in R&D to further innovate or reinvent their products to fit the evolving needs and wants of the market, especially in the fast-growing F&B sector.

Also Read: The future of food tech lies in building digitally autonomous restaurants

R&D can be closely associated with digitalisation and innovation. Either way, R&D ensures that the company would stay alert to market developments and be ready to equip itself to pivot for the future. Companies can now also tap into resources offered by the Singapore government which supports the creation of new revenue streams through the recently launched Food Services Industry Transformation Map 2025 (ITM).

Backed up by Enterprise SG, the ITM drives more efforts on R&D, to cater to the changing consumer preference for convenience, health and wellness, and sustainability.

Besides promoting revenue growth, R&D possesses the power to provide businesses with infinite fallbacks in times of need. In 2017, NJ Group invested in R&D to create COBIE, the Friendly Food Butler.

Before the pandemic, COBIE served a combination of technology innovation and culinary satisfaction to guests at their tables or even in their hotel rooms as an automated room service provider. This was initially seen as a value-added service that improved restaurant operations in recent years. Our R&D has been key to our expedited growth, even with unexpected limitations such as safe distancing measures and quarantine notices in hotels.

And the tides are changing, the dynamic consumer behaviour is more exciting than ever, with new products becoming more groundbreaking, made with newer flavours and unimaginable combinations of ingredients.

We are seeing F&B businesses concentrating their efforts on catering to the sustainable crowd and becoming more inclusive of a wider range of dietary preferences as well.

While the F&B landscape is a challenging one to navigate, as business leaders, it is a responsibility we should take upon ourselves to strategically plan, and always remember to stay prudent to our roadmaps, be loyal to our business goals, and keep moving forward vigilantly.

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