LSBM303 Critical Issues in Business Management Report: COVID-19 Impact

This report examines critical issues in business management, focusing on the impact of COVID-19 and digital transformation. It analyzes the state of play, opportunities, and challenges in digital transformation within the Commonwealth, highlighting the effects on trade, investment, and the fintech sector. The report discusses the evolution of business practices, the adoption of digital technology, and the changing business environment. It evaluates the impact of the pandemic on the fintech sector, emphasizing the shift towards digital payments and their long-term implications. The report also presents the opportunities and challenges faced by the Commonwealth countries in the digital era, including the rise of new industries and the increasing competition, and the unreliability of the information provided by the internet. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to adapt to these critical issues in order to sustain their business in the market and to take necessary steps to mitigate risks. This report provides a comprehensive overview of these critical issues and their implications for the future of business management.

Critical issues of
business management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
State of play and opportunities and challenges in Digital Transformation in the
Commonwealth...........................................................................................................................4
Evaluation of the impact that COVID-19 has had/will have on trade and investment and in
particular on the fintech sector....................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
This report is based on the impact of critical issues on the business management which is
faced by the organisation and what are the steps which should be taken in order to tackle these
issues. Business management is explained as the management of the resources of the business in
effective and efficient way which can help in achieving the goals and objectives. These days
COVID-19 is the major issue faced by every single country in the world and this pandemic has
affected every people and business in the world. COVID-19 affected the ways of business and
the techniques have changed of doing the business and thus every sector and every organisation
has been affected by this pandemic. This report also revolves around the impact of the COVID-
19 on the fintech and how these days digital transformation affected the business of the
organisation (Duarte and Cruz-Machado, 2017). This report also helps in understanding that the
practices which are taken and implemented by the organisation in order to sustain their business
in the market and amid this pandemic how digital technology helped the organisation in doing
their business effectively and how the business environment have changed in the world. The
business practices have changed and how the business have adopted these practices in order to
make their business effective.
MAIN BODY
State of play and opportunities and challenges in Digital Transformation in the Commonwealth
As the world is moving forward so is the technology, the world is advancing in the
digitalisation very fast. There are lot of things that wasn't possible along time ago but with the
help of digitalization all the things are possible within a short time span. With the advancement
in the digital sector the ways and the method of the trades are changing. Not only that the routes
are also changing, as the advancement in technology will help them in having better option of
routes through which they will be able to save the time and efforts that earlier was not possible.
Only through digitalization a lot thing and task are possible and attainable (Porter, Razi and
Ramsey, 2017). Like in the sector of trade digitalization helped various trader and various
country to increase their trade. The common wealth countries are the most affected one with this
digitalization process, as the trade in these countries have boosted up as they were able to trade
various product and services which earlier were not easy to transport, it can be due to their

intangibility or any thing else. Commonwealth consist of 54 countries, these countries are having
different type of trade able item and these countries are having various different culture also.
All these countries are highly advanced in the technology and they are all digitalized and
with the help of threat they are all developing. In the total of the commonwealth exports six
countries are the one which made upto 98.8 percent of the total. These six countries are
Singapore, Malaysia, united kingdom, Canada, India and Australia. Only with the help of
digitalization, they were able to achieve this much and now the speed of digitalization is
increasing and with that they are able to to make a significant impact in the total export of the
commonwealth countries (Marcinkowski and Gawin, 2019). According to the data form various
sources it is been found out that only a few common wealth country are able to participate in the
digital economy. It is also been found that there is big gap between the big economy and the
small economy, it is all due to the fact that the countries are not able to digitalize their economy.
It is also been noticed that smaller countries that are the participants of the commonwealth are
also participating and they are also significant contribution in that. It is a positive sign that these
small country are showing significant contribution as they are also advancing themselves in the
technological sector.
Only with the help of digitalisation various international barriers are being lowered, the e-
commerce sector have also risen again and is also continue to be rising again. With the help of
this the goods that can be traded are also diversified in their nature and as more and more types
of goods can be traded through this. This advancement in the technology help new types of
product to enter in the trade and it also helped the new comer to enter in the trade industry,with
the help of this diversifies product are available with diversified seller.
Opportunity and challenges
As this all about the advancement in the technological use in the export and import of the
commonwealth countries, there are various 9opportunity that will be rising and their are various
challenges that the commonwealth countries will be facing. Everything thing has its own good
and negative point (Yilmaz and Flouris, 2017). In this case there they are having various
challenges that they will face but for these challenges they have to face it and they have to turn
them into the opportunity. Some of the upcoming opportunity that will automatically come in
their way which they will have to utilize are as follows:

 growing new industry – with the help of digitalisation as the trades are increasing and the
number of trader are increasing this will ultimately result in the growing of the sector and
this will also result in the creativity and innovation. This creativity and innovation will
give rise to Newer market or Newer industry. With this the scope of entry band exit
barriers will also reduce. This digital transformational will also help them in trading with
more goods and services and through this they will be able to deliver new product easily
and in a fast manner. This will increase the effectiveness and the efficiency in the trade increase in the employment opportunity – with the help of digitalization a s there is the
increase or the creation of the new market there is also an increase of employment in the
market. as this new products will come up new opportunity and the new opportunity will
come up with new job creation. This will ultimately lead to the betterment of the
economy of the commonwealth countries. As more and more employment is generated so
more and more innovative and creative idea will comes, this will ultimately give arise to
the value of the product that is being traded by the commonwealth countries (Aaboen and
Aarikka-Stenroos, 2017).
Challenges
When the country are forwarding toward digitalization then they will also have top facer many
challenges that will come on their way they will have to make and turn these challenges into the
opportunity, for this they have to clearly monitor those challenges and they have to take the
corrective measures at the right time. Some of the most common challenges that they will face
are:
 increase in the competition – with the entry of new industry and the increase in the new
participant the competition within the country will also increase, as with the help of
digital transformation the common wealth country can easily do various task that the old
established country or the biog economy did earlier. This will also lead to the increase in
the competition and as the competition increase the market share and the consume share
will also be divided into different fragments (Sodhi, Singh and Singh, 2020).
 Unreliable source – as all the country will go or will move forward digitally they will be
more and more reliable on the data that is provide by the internet. It is also been seen
from the recent data that most of the commonwealth country have increaser their use of

internet. As everyone know that the information provided by the internet is unreliable
and lot of these information can easily be changed so it will be big challenge for them.
Evaluation of the impact that COVID-19 has had/will have on trade and investment and in
particular on the fintech sector
COVID-19 have made the huge impact on the everyone's daily life and it has affected the
every country economy and it's business. Every business is affected by this pandemic and with
this the practices of business are totally changed and organisation have started to adapt new
practices and taking necessary steps in order to sustain their business in the market. COVID-19
have affected the every single economy of the country and the due to this business of
organisation are also affected. This pandemic affected the global growth and by continuous
spread of this virus trade between the countries is also affected. Trade is one of the important
part in the development of the economy of country as trade between the countries makes sure the
flow of essential goods in the market and helps in boosting the economy of the country. During
the pandemic the trade between the countries have gone up as the need for the essential products
arises and the countries have imposed different rules and regulations during the trade of the
products to protect from the virus and have taken the safety measures to stop the virus form
spreading (Fitzpatrick, A. M. and Balci, 2017). Finances sector have seen the huge impact
because of the pandemic as the government have announced the packages for the organisation
and for the small medium enterprises in order to keep them in the business and government have
proposed the packages for the needy people also as it impact the banking system and the finance
system because during the pandemic the maximum organisation business faced recession due to
the lack of sales and it also resulted in the reduction in their profit levels which overall affected
the finances sector of every country. The technological sector has been very effective amid this
pandemic as the people who are buying any product are making payment through the digital
mode which made the payment contactless and during this pandemic people are encouraged to
make payment through the digital mode as it helps in reducing the risk of spreading the virus and
also it is a effective and efficient way of making the payment (GCosenz and Noto, 2018). Digital
payments are considered as the option for the long term because it is very much hassle free and it
takes very less time and it can be made from any place and it is proving to be very much
effective and efficient.

CONCLUSION
This report concludes that there are very critical issues which is faced by the organisation
in order to manage their business effectively and efficiently and the steps should be taken in
order to sustain the business in the market. Recently the issue faced by the business of the
organisation is the COVID-19 pandemic as it affected the whole world and due to this
organisation have adapted new techniques and new practices for the success of their
organisation. During this pandemic the trade and the investment has been affected and in order to
tackle these issues the countries have encouraged the export and import as the supply chain have
the great significance in running the economy. This report also concludes about the digitalisation
impact on the commonwealth countries and the transformation it is bringing in the
commonwealth countries. These days the digitalisation is encouraged due to the pandemic as
digitalisation helped consumers and people in making the digital transaction which is contactless
and hassle free and it also reduces the risk of virus spread. Commonwealth countries consist of
the both small and large economies and the countries with developed economies providing
significant share in the development of small economies. Digital transformation has created
opportunities for the development of economies in the long term and also gives developed
economies chance to enhance their performance and productivity.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aaboen, L. and Aarikka-Stenroos, L., 2017. Start-ups initiating business relationships: process
and asymmetry. IMP Journal.
Cosenz, F. and Noto, G., 2018. Fostering entrepreneurial learning processes through Dynamic
Start-up business model simulators. The International Journal of Management
Education.16(3). pp.468-482.
Duarte, S. and Cruz-Machado, V., 2017. Green and lean model for business sustainability.
InProceedings of the Tenth international conference on management science and
engineering management (pp. 1281-1291). Springer, Singapore.
Fitzpatrick, A. M. and Balci, G., Promoting Road Freight Industry to Women: Motivations and
Challenges of Female Truck Drivers in the UK. In Critical Issues on Changing Dynamics
in Employee Relations and Workforce Diversity (pp. 222-241). IGI Global.
Godwyn, M., 2017. The banality of good and evil: Ethics courses in business management
education. In Dimensional Corporate Governance (pp. 37-48). Springer, Cham.
Jahantigh, F .F., Habibi, A. and Sarafrazi, A., 2019. A conceptual framework for business
intelligence critical success factors. International Journal of Business Information
Systems.30(1). pp.109-123.
Marcinkowski, B. and Gawin, B., 2019. A study on the adaptive approach to technology-driven
enhancement of multi-scenario business processes. Information Technology & People.
Nesterov, M. and Skarga-Bandurova, I., 2018, May. Troubleshooting and performance
methodology for business critical systems. In 2018 IEEE 9th International Conference on
Dependable Systems, Services and Technologies (DESSERT) (pp. 521-525). IEEE.
Porter, S. E., Razi, A. E. and Ramsey, T. B., 2017. Novel strategies to improve resident selection
by improving cultural fit: AOA critical issues. JBJS.99(22). p.e120.
Shah, H. G. and Kant, R., 2018. Identification of critical knowledge management enablers for
implementation of KM in manufacturing organisations. International Journal of Business
Excellence.14(3). pp.285-318.
Singhal, N., Suryawanshi, P. and Mittal, G., 2017. Crafting responsible management practices in
business school learning outcomes: An Indian case study. Vision.21(1). pp.46-62.
Sodhi, H. S., Singh, D. and Singh, B. J., 2020. An empirical investigation to evaluate the
relationship between success factors of Lean Six Sigma and waste management
issues.International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage.12(2-3). pp.97-119.
Van Looy, A., 2018, September. On the synergies between business process management and
digital innovation. In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp.
359-375). Springer, Cham.
Yilmaz, A. K. and Flouris, T., 2017. Corporate risk management for international business.
Springer Singapore.