It’s been a strange year and most people I know have already written it off. “Roll on 2021!” seems to be a common utterance in my family at the moment, no doubt similar in yours. With Covid, lockdowns, toilet roll shortages and panic about economic impact, it’s easy to see 2020 as a bad year that just needs to come to an end.
A Opportunity for Innovation
It’s been a strange year and most people I know have already written it off. “Roll on 2021!” seems to be a common utterance in my family at the moment, no doubt similar in yours.
With Covid, lockdowns, toilet roll shortages and panic about economic impact, it’s easy to see 2020 as a bad year that just needs to come to an end.
But, with all the negative, there have been some surprising positives from the year.
Remote working became the norm for most businesses. The years of “we really MUST have everyone in the office” culture has finally broken, which will allow more flexible hiring, more flexibility with personal and work time, less stressful commuting and, of course, cost savings for businesses.
It isn’t just office working that has suddenly become innovative to better fit the current climate. Local bars have become off-licenses, restaurants are running as take-aways and shops are offering online/delivery/click & collect options en-masse, some for the first time.
Innovation may have been triggered by necessity, but it shows that, given a challenge, businesses can still rise to the occasion regardless of how small or in what sector. And it’s a wonderful thing to see.
Our business hasn’t been immune to the headaches of the past 9 months either.
Our key product – MyShiftPlanner – although incredibly popular, relies on people in the shift working sectors actually being in work. As soon as all the hospitality, manufacture and leisure sectors closed globally, so did most of our revenue streams from that product.
We had two ways to approach this.
- Panic, cut expenditure and rush out some way to bolster the revenue streams with amazing deals, or quick-to-market new products.
- See it as a period of calm (less users means less support and less strain on the dev team), use it for reflection and improve our business model for the future.
It was tempting for choose number 1, but we went for number 2 and it was the right choice.
New Apps for MyBuzz
Given the time to reflect, we set out a clear roadmap for the next few years. We took time to research new sectors and opportunities, updated our marketing strategy and entered the final quarter of the year focused, refreshed and with more energy than we ever have in Q4.
We can’t wait to show you what we have planned for 2021, but that’s for another post nearer the time!
Before then, we’re proud to announce the launch of our new fun little Christmas app. It’s something we really enjoyed building as a project during lockdown, but we hope you find it useful when trying to manage your Christmas shopping for friends and family.
https://my-christmas-buddy.com/
It’s available for Android and iOS now for free so why not give it a try!
If you like it, we’d also love your help to spread word by sharing this post or the link through your own channels.
Merry Christmas! 🎄🎄🎄