When a business loses revenue, it can spell disaster. That is no light matter to make fun of or gloat upon. Still, some of the biggest companies have been affected by some significant hiccups over the years that they may have been able to avoid with better planning and enterprise risk management systems in place. The best way to learn from them is to see where they went wrong.
Amazon’s Prime Day Failure
In 2018, the world’s biggest online marketplace crashed during its Prime Day sale. The homepage was only down for 15 minutes, which doesn’t seem like a lot of time in the vast span of things. Yet, it already resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue. In that time, over 21,000 reports were logged simply because it was not functioning. That is akin to customers lost and a hit to reputability, especially for such a major sale day that was highly promoted and anticipated.
To combat such disastrous situations like this, companies need to have backup systems in place for data protection. For those directly dealing with consumers, a better network needs to be set up to handle large numbers of engagement. There should be no instance where your business is entirely offline.
Blockbuster’s Untimely Demise
Blockbuster was one of the most successful names in its industry, becoming poised as a thought leader in that arena for its decades-long run. And yet, just like that, branches everywhere started closing down, and the big honcho was suddenly no more. Why did this unfortunate ending come about? A lack of disruptive strategy.
With how quickly life is paced now and with technology constantly advancing, there is a need for businesses to keep up with the times and find ways to innovate along with the shifting forms of media and market behavior. For Blockbuster’s case, unfortunately, internal conflict with how to move forward and adapt to online video streaming put a wrench in executing things in time. Any moves they tried to make then ended up in more costs than profit.
Multiple Victims of COVID-19’s Rampage
COVID-19 has created a major impact on the entire world in pretty much every avenue of life. Part of this horrible “new normal” is the number of businesses affected by the pandemic every single day. And some of the biggest companies out there have not been immune to this. As even huge brands like ALDO, Frontier Communications, and Gold’s Gym have already filed for bankruptcy in 2020, it’s a grim reminder of how important it is to be prepared for disasters like this.
Mapping out a financial plan and a way to keep operations going with restrictions imposed by wide-scale quarantine or the threat of natural calamities can do a lot to help a business remain afloat for a period when a crisis like this hits.
Nobody wants to think about their business possibly hitting a considerable snag that will be hard to recover from, and it’s no fun thing to look back at some of the biggest slip-ups of our time. But this can shed light on some risks and hazards that every company needs to prepare for.