EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.
How EY can help
-
The EY forecasting and scenario planning team can help optimize your business to rapidly make strategic, operational and portfolio decisions.
Read more
The pandemic recovery will be driven by medically defined phases
The lack of confidence is justified. Unlike past downturns, the current crisis is both an economic and a medical one. The COVID-19 recovery will move through medically defined phases; a three-year plan could change in three days, based on when the spread of the virus slows (now), when companies can ramp up reopening, especially as testing and tracking protocols can be put in place (next) and, eventually, when there is immunity, either through vaccines or herd immunity (beyond). Even beyond the medical recovery, human movement and interactions may return, but in completely different patterns and ways that shift entire industries to new models.
The challenge is that the intensity and length of each phase is still unclear, and we will see changes in customer demand across each phase. To prepare for these changes, forecasting must become a core competency, with an emphasis on analyzing data from multiple and sometimes novel sources to understand not only your customers’ plans, but also the potential change in who your customers are and how you deliver value to them. This means that waiting for the market to return to normal conditions as if it will be a V, U, L or W-shaped return to the demand curves can miss the bigger changes happening in the market.