TGS Helps Future-Proof Your Business

What lessons can be learned and what could the post-lockdown future hold for professional service firms? While a lot of entrepreneurs still feel like they need a crystal ball to navigate the situation, TGS adapted during the crisis and is now preparing for what happens next.

Resilience is key

Over the last 18 months, Covid has forced many firms to reconsider the sustainability of their business model. 

Resilience and ingenuity have taken hold. It’s been tough, but it has also brought out the best in us, as Marc Desjardins, partner of TGS France and co-founder and CEO of TGS, explains. “Around Christmas time, I had the opportunity to call TGS members to ask them about the crisis and how they were responding to it. I prepared myself for awful news, but instead, the majority were positive and told me they were developing new projects. Some were introducing new software or reorganizing their company to be more efficient. It was inspiring.”

Adaptability is the new norm

The overwhelming response confirmed that TGS member firms continue to be entrepreneurial just as they were before the pandemic. “At TGS, we want to attract entrepreneurs. My recent calls confirmed that was exactly what we were doing. Within our own team, we were remaining positive and finding ways of adapting during this period. The majority of our members were also doing this.”

The impact of Covid served to galvanise the TGS community with a shared sense of purpose and responsibility, taking it to new levels of imagination and perseverance.

“We couldn’t just stop and wait until things got better,” Marc explains. “We had to carry on. I knew the team would manage the situation, so we had to show our members we were up to the challenge. We knew we had the energy and we had the ideas.”

This process began with communication. “We had to reassure our members that we were here to help their businesses even during these difficult times. For instance, one of the benefits of TGS is that we are linked internationally; we can speak to members across the globe. And people wanted to talk, not only to us but also more importantly with each other.”

Digitalisation as an opportunity to grow

The TGS solution? Transferring their events, conferences and seminars to the digital realm. By May, the entire schedule had gone virtual. In the following six months, 50 webinars were conducted to an audience spread across the globe.

“Every time we share something with our members, we learn from it,” Marc explains. “So what we did in May 2020, isn’t what we’re doing now. For instance, we know that if a session lasts longer than three hours, it becomes difficult to keep the enthusiasm going. It’s not possible to simply replicate online what we did in person. We had to adapt.”

And so, TGS adapted to ‘new normal’ with some webinars and workshops limited to 20 minutes and the digital tools (including Zoom) to help people conduct meetings in their own homes and explore a new work-life balance.

This raised the prospect of a paperless office and unlocked the potential of technology to change lives. 

So what next?

“I see opportunities. There will likely be increasing atomization through artificial intelligence and paper will disappear so we won’t be doing the same job we did 20 years ago. If we are proactive and show our clients that we can use our core competencies and skills to prepare reports about corporate social responsibility and carbon footprints as well as more traditional financial reporting, there will be some great new products and services TGS member firms can offer.”

The Covid crisis has coincided with the emergence of new regulations, a renewed sense of global responsibility and the possibility of a constant ‘recovery mode’. It has also coincided with a tipping point in online collaborative work tools and, according to the European Commission, the EU is set for its fastest economic growth since 1976.

“We have to adapt, and this moment in time should be seen as an opportunity” Marc concludes “I am very optimistic and I think that the TGS network is a crystal ball showing us the way forward.  We just need to stay alert, be agile and listen to the collective intelligence of our members.”