There’s no doubt that the coronavirus outbreak has already had a dramatic impact on the economy in the UK (and indeed across the globe), with the nation’s GDP expected to fall by a staggering 35% during the second quarter of 2020 alone.

With consumer confidence and spending also plummeting, businesses are expected to lay off a further two million employees nationwide in the coming weeks, exacerbating the economic decline and creating a long way back for afflicted firms.

To minimise the impact of such economic ruin, it’s imperative that companies are able to determine critical success factors and ensuring these are met in the short and medium-term. But what is a critical success factor, and how can you identify those that are most relevant to you?

What is a Critical Success Factor?

In simple terms, a critical success factor (which may be abbreviated to CSF in some instances) is a high-level goal or strategic objective that’s central to a company’s success.

As you can imagine, the nature of critical success factors varies from one industry to another, although there are universal examples such as financial prudence, product development and long-term cost management.

Such factors will not only help to distinguish successful from failing businesses, but they will also have a direct impact on profitability and a company’s true growth potential within a specified time period.

How to Determine Critical Success Factors

1. Create a Collaborative Approach When Tacking CSFs

Before you do anything else, it’s important to knit together a skilled and team that will be focused on CSFs.

This should involve both high-level executives and regular employees, with a view to providing strong and guided leadership that remains focused on achieving the core objective.

A collaborative approach is definitely recommended here, particularly as many CSFs are relatively complex and can be difficult to achieve over time. At the same time, there may be a number of different elements to high-level CSFs, so they’d be impossible to achieve without the input of executives and teamwork between different departments.

2. Engage Employees by Asking for Their Feedback

When achieving CSFs, it’s easy to overlook the hard work of employees and the key roles that they play in driving attainment.

This can create a degree of apathy amongst entry-level and less senior colleagues, which can in turn impact negatively on morale and drive a decline in productivity.

To avoid this issue, we’d recommend that you engage your employees and ask for their own CSFs and the best methods in which to achieve them.

Not only will this create a higher level of engagement and boost the quality of collaboration, but it also has the potential to improve operational processes over time.

3. Make Sure That You Have the Right Funding

Most commercial objectives require cash to fully realise, but the way in which you source investment and secure funding has a huge impact on the attainment of CSFs.

More specifically, it’s important to optimise capital while minimising debt, which is a delicate balance to strike in any business climate.

One great idea is to create a single-strategy portfolio that’s highly focused and overseen by experienced fund managers.

This has the potential to deliver sizeable, long-term gains, which is central to the sustainable success of any venture.