Communication becomes a vital skill during a pandemic. Every professional has their role to play. Journalists document the challenges the virus poses for those managing pension schemes. Copywriters tell clients about the threats and opportunities which have arisen from the crisis. All of us need to find ways of talking to our colleagues and clients so we can strengthen relationships and build new ones. This month I shared my knowledge of how to work well from home as well as explaining why access to cash is so important when revenues dry up overnight. An article looking at the future of cost transparency was published and I helped one of my clients explain how technology should hasten the discovery of a treatment and a vaccine for Covid-19.
How to work well from home
To help those now working remotely full time, I shared my top tips perfected over the last 14 years of running a business from my flat. It takes time to learn how to do your job effectively from your own home but it can be done by establishing good habits and taking steps to make you feel happy and productive.
The importance of cash-flow
Working as an investment analyst taught me to never trust a profit and loss account and to always look at a company’s cash flow. But while I understood this intellectually, it wasn’t until I started freelancing this became a viscerally understood truth. You can issue as many invoices as you like but if they aren’t paid, you don’t have a viable business. In this blog post, I use some dummy financial accounts to explain negative operational and financial gearing and why the demand shock imposed by Covid-19 means companies and individuals need cash straight away.
Granularity is the key to cost transparency
Ten months on from the introduction of the cost transparency initiative, this article asks how to turn raw data into useful metrics. I draw an analogy with the financial measures used by investment analysts to monitor the performance of a company. Data analytics companies may be needed to collect the granular information which then can be used to provide like-for-like comparisons. Understanding transactions costs might be particularly vital for schemes.
How technology can help to combat Covid-19
Improvements in technology and a better understanding of virology will make it easier for biotechnology companies to develop both a cure for and vaccine to Covid-19. But while technology has also helped to make it possible to increase the yield of a vaccine, developing a vaccine takes time. Treatment is more likely to come before immunisation.
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