- Risk and crisis management
- Ensure liquidity in the Covid-19 context
- Contingency planning: The 'Plan B' for an escalating crisis
- Transport and logistics sector: Ensure liquidity and ability to act despite Covid-19
- Covid-19: How to secure your business in the real estate industry
- HR management: Protect employees, ensure cooperation.
- Minimise risks in the supply chain, ensure security of supplies
- Insurance industry: Manage the consequences of the corona pandemic together
- Covid-19: How to re-establish business stability
- Setting up a crisis-proof business and operating model for banks
- Industry experts: An interview with our Head of Private Equity
The following topics help you further to ensure your business remains a going concern and position it as a more resilient company. We accompany and advise you to help you deal with the economic impacts of the pandemic along the entire value chain – with crucial information and the assessments of our experts.
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Risk and crisis management
It is difficult to grasp the number of risks the coronavirus entails. We help you to maintain an overview and develop solutions.
If something happens that never should, crisis management is called upon. The coronavirus has created an extraordinary situation for society and business. We support you to survive the crisis and guide your company out of this difficult situation. We offer you an initial online risk assessment free of charge – giving you an information edge in this difficult-to-navigate situation –, help you to secure your IT, inform you of emergency state aid and support your crisis management function.
Manage the crisis
The virus and the safeguards ask questions of all structures and systems. We analyse your contingency plans with you. Which suppliers can no longer be relied on? Which customers? Which systems can be wound down? We support you with the organisation of a crisis unit and with communication.
Know what is important
A striking feature of this crisis is how thick and fast the news keeps coming. So it is important to maintain an overview. We use our Online Risk Monitoring for automated analysis of news from all over the world, with a focus on the events relevant to you. This helps you to prepare, and act while looking ahead.
Maintain IT security
When employees are absent and home working becomes the norm, IT security comes under particular strain. With our preventive IT crisis management, we enable you to maintain an overview of the risks. Which IT supply chains are at risk? How is the data load changing? How can you keep IT running despite staff shortages?
Draw on emergency state aid
To counter the wide-ranging financial impacts, the state has passed measures to provide considerable aid. Access to short-time work funding has been made a lot easier, while additional loans can be received from the KfW [German Development Bank]. These measures will likely be expanded going forward. With our financial aid management, we identify which funds apply to you and help you to draw on this assistance.
With an eye to the future
Predict disasters before they strike. It sounds like science fiction, yet it's perfectly possible. The crucial part is thoroughly analysing data. This allows the executive board and management to assess risks at an early stage. Find out how this works from our expert Lyth Al-Khazrage.
Ensure liquidity in the Covid-19 context
Covid-19: For strongly affected companies, professional liquidity management is of central importance in securing they remain a going concern
Depending on the sector, the impacts of Covid-19 can hit companies at different points of their value chain. For companies affected, this will result in lower cash inflows and existing reserves being drawn on. In this context, crucial questions must be asked of the scope of reserves and of measures to secure liquidity, for example by using state aid programmes.
Contingency planning: The 'Plan B' for an escalating crisis
Planning scenarios and contingencies
The current huge upheavals in the global economic process are creating much concern. What applies today may be a thing of the past by tomorrow. This goes for relationships with customers, suppliers and the authorities. Companies must prepare for this.
Planning scenarios and contingencies (Contingency Planning, 'Plan B') is essential to react quickly and prepare potential measures.
Maintaining the ability to act requires a stringent focus on liquidity and potential scenarios. This means considering all relevant financial and legal factors, e.g. contractual penalties, covenants, interest, taxes, subsidies, reclaims, grants, guarantees and deadlines.
The scenarios and potential actions must be quickly identified and quantified. Often, a comprehensive communication plan and stakeholder management approach is needed at short notice so that decisions can be made quickly.
Transport and logistics sector: Ensure liquidity and ability to act despite Covid-19
Key measures for liquidity shortages in logistics to ensure financial ability to act in the corona crisis
The current regulations in the international movement of people and goods mean that the coming weeks will see increasing restrictions on air and sea freight and on road and rail transport. This will be a huge challenge for the transportation and logistics sector which must be overcome. A crucial aspect of a company's success will be to rigorously focus on liquidity and efficiently maintain its services.
KPMG has identified three basic risk factors that endanger transport and logistics companies' liquidity and ability to act in the current situation:
- Decline in demand through gaps appearing in the supply chain
- Restrictions in a company's own services and capacities
- Liquidity risks for customers and market participants
We help you to maintain your financial ability to act in the crisis. Our experts will assist you with this, offering relevant industry knowledge on how to deal with the financial impacts in this extraordinary situation.
Covid-19: How to secure your business in the real estate industry
Analyse risks for the real estate industry – discover and implement possible actions
Covid-19 has already had considerable effects on large parts of German industry and the service sector. This has placed a huge strain on the real estate industry, which is already under pressure due to the numerous interdependencies that exist. We recommend that owners of properties, project developers and service providers analyse the resulting risks precisely to identify and implement potential actions from a legal, tax and business-administration perspective. We offer support to companies and their governing bodies in every conceivable aspect of these tasks.
'As an experienced managing director and board member, I know the requirements currently being placed on company management very well. Our real estate experts know what is now at stake and which (short-term) measures to take to secure your business operations.' – Hans Volkert Volckens
We have moved almost completely to mobile working. But we remain available permanently and without restrictions to answer all questions. You can continue to benefit from our services in their entirety and without any loss of quality.
Helping hands
We can assist you at any time with your daily operations, so that the well-being of your employees can remain the top priority.
HR management: Protect employees, ensure cooperation.
Your employees are affected particularly by the coronavirus and the related safeguards. What your HR department should do now.
The coronavirus is one of the biggest challenges that HR departments have ever faced. On the one hand, employees are directly affected by the virus. Companies have a duty of care. The main task now is to minimise danger to life. The situation is complicated in companies that operate internationally and that must keep in mind the safety requirements in each respective country.
On the other hand, the safeguards taken to combat the virus have fundamentally altered personnel requirements and the way of working together. Workload has fallen dramatically in many companies. Short-time work and redundancies are potential knock-on effects. Furthermore, home working has quickly become standard in many places.
Using our Academy & Training solution, we will train HR departments during the crisis. We support you with matters including:
- Awareness training on health risks/pandemics
- Crisis communication & stakeholder management
- Travel management
- Expat management & emergency planning
- Healthcare & emergency management
This specific situation has significantly increased the number of tasks for the HR department. One form of support could be digital tools. Automated text recognition helps to allocate requests to the correct place. And chatbots can answer questions from employees. We help you to set these tools up quickly and reduce the burden on your HR department.
Minimise risks in the supply chain, ensure security of supplies
The spread of the coronavirus is disrupting supply chains. We help you to identify and resolve bottlenecks.
The spread of the Covid-19 lung disease is affecting companies worldwide and, in such an interconnected global economy, is impacting supply chains: primary products can't be delivered on time, suppliers have stopped due to personnel and other bottlenecks.
We support you in this extraordinary situation to reduce supply chain risks that have arisen due to the pandemic and which may continue to arise, to resolve gaps in supply and to develop alternative solutions.
Checklist: What you should clarify
- Suppliers: Can you locate your main suppliers? Do you have contingency planning to ensure the continuity of supply?
- Logistics: Do you know your supply channels? Have you spoken with your logistics providers to understand potential impacts and find out how they intend to mitigate them? What are your contingency plans in case routes are blocked?
- Contracts: Have you reviewed your contracts with key customers and suppliers to understand issues of liability in the event of supply bottlenecks? How will you react if suppliers cite clauses for force majeure?
- Inventory: Have you assessed your inventory coverage? Will you have to limit stock for specific customers if inventories turn out to be short? Are you able to track shipments in real time and thereby manage customer expectations?
- Customer retention and demand: What do you expect from your customers? How well do you know your customers? How likely are you to lose your customers to competition/alternatives? What will be the effect of a decline in consumer demand on your long-term growth plans?
Supply chain analysis and securing the supply chain
Our supplier risk management helps you to monitor supplier-specific KPIs and thereby track and assess potential effects on the end-to-end supply chain. You can identify alternative vendors and thereby avoid disruptions to supply.
A dynamic analysis of the current crisis situation at n-tier level along the whole supply chain will identify critical components in the chain. This will create the necessary transparency and help to derive recommendations and implement any potential alternative supply chains as the situation demands. New suppliers or alternative transport options will be optimally integrated. This will ensure the availability of materials and guarantee the continuation of operating business even as the corona crisis is ongoing.
A pre-prepared task force management approach will help you, e.g. in developing measures to prevent circumstances leading to insolvency and thus reduce risks of liability. A clear crisis communication structure will optimally integrate all relevant stakeholders and ensure contact to these stakeholders.
Data-driven inventory optimisation
To ensure business stability, stock management of spare parts – often a purely manual process – should be optimised. Today, stock management is often based on expert knowledge, and the complexity of modern production facilities is leading to an increase in the number of spare parts to be accounted for.
We offer you a data-driven analysis of historical spare parts requirements including the associated order and supply processes and the machinery stock. In this way, you can identify stock surplus and shortages and resolve any imbalances. Based on the analysis, we will develop an optimal stock position for you with a view to availability requirements. This reduces the amount of capital tied up.
An easy-to-use dashboard supports the professional user continually to optimally manage internal operations and make any necessary subsequent adjustments. In addition, drivers of part consumption can be identified and data-driven forecasts can be prepared concerning consumption rates and delivery times. This allows you to identify critical bottlenecks in spare parts stock in advance and address these proactively.
Insurance industry: Manage the consequences of the corona pandemic together
KPMG offers a special range of services with short-term and indirect areas of activity for insurers
KPMG has been a reliable partner for the insurance industry for many years. In this complicated and uncertain time, we will continue to actively support insurers to overcome the current challenges.
To do this, we have developed a specific range of services that will be gradually expanded and adapted to the current circumstances. We will provide our clients with the services included in this package – swiftly and in a spirit of partnership. The focus is on the immediately necessary areas of activity that insurers should be currently concentrating on.
This includes
- Ensuring the ability to act regarding insurance operations and claims
- Bridging losses of income in sales to safeguard the sales force in the long term
- Reviewing legal, regulatory and tax matters and deriving strategic courses of action
- Analysing scenarios of changes to premiums and the volume of claims based on the solidarity approach taken in the company.
Please contact us directly so that we can discuss your specific needs in detail.
Covid-19: How to re-establish business stability
We support you to absorb losses of capacity and adjust processes accordingly
Most employees are working from home, and there is also a higher illness rate – companies are currently faced with challenges that have never before existed in this form and which are leading to losses of capacity. We support you to react to these bottlenecks and advise you on how to adjust your processes in the different areas and thus ensure that necessary tasks are performed.
We offer you comprehensive expertise and solutions in the following areas:
- Procurement and customer (cost optimisation, supplier management, maintaining conditions, digital customer platform, automated answers to frequent questions, etc.)
- Production and logistics (KPI recording, tracking and monitoring, KPI dashboards, etc.)
- Finance (controlling/accounting) (automated receipt of invoice)
- HR (training, contract generation, handling doctor's notes, etc.)
- IT (user management, IT hotlines, cybersecurity requests, etc.)
Setting up a crisis-proof business and operating model for banks
Covid-19 is a stress test for banks too. We support you in the short term – to stabilise your business and operating model over the long stretch.
The last financial crisis and the strict regulatory requirements of recent years have made the banking system more crisis-resistant. But the corona pandemic is presenting the financial system with unforeseen challenges, and banks will still be feeling the effects for months after the crisis. The medium and long-term severity of the crisis cannot yet be predicted, but acute measures have been demanded to ensure the stability of business and operating models. Decision makers should reassess risks now to make themselves resistant to the crisis.
For this reason, KPMG Financial Services will accompany you at all times as reliable partner, support you swiftly and offer solutions for all relevant questions in the crisis.