The first online conference organized by SAM in collaboration with the ICT Hub: “Business in challenging times – How to responsibly adapt business for the benefit of employees, companies and society?” was held yesterday, Thursday, March 19th.

Below we present a brief description of the conference “Business in challenging times”, downloaded from the website of the Serbian Association of Managers. You can also find a recording of the entire online conference at this link, or at the bottom of the page.

A unique message to all managers and entrepreneurs from the online conference is: Create a plan that involves managing operational expenses and creditors, exercise discipline in implementing the plan, and achieve unity within the agreed time. The priority is to preserve people, but also to find ways to maintain business processes and ensure the liquidity of businesses in challenging times during an emergency – just some of the conclusions of the first online conference organized by the Serbian Association of Managers and ICT Hub.

About the ways in which the business community can help the society, but also what is necessary to those who are first to be hit, small and medium enterprises, preserve and maintain, and how important it is to share best practices, ideas and suggestions, they talked : Dragoljub Damljanovic, President of SAM and Vice President of Energy and Services in Southeastern Europe, Schneider electric, Slavko Caric, CEO, Erste Bank, Slobodan Djinovic, Director, Orion Telekom and Milos Perovic, COO and Co-Owner, Termovent.
Special guests from abroad were: Sonja Šmuc, Director General of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia and Goran Licanin, CDO and Business Development Director for IOT, Cloud and B2B HUAWEI CEE & NORDIC Poland. The online conference was moderated by Dejan Randic, Director of DNA Communications and ICT Hub and Kosta Andric, Managing Partner of ICT Hub.

“The role of the business community is to take care of employees and protect them, to enable them to have the safest way they work. In addition, we need to continue business processes as far as possible, infrastructure systems must not stop, “is the first comment by Dragoljub Damljanovic, President of the Managing Board of SAM.

In China, according to Damljanovic, business has started to grow significantly, although it has fallen sharply in the first two months of this year. “We need to be prepared that in many segments of the need it will grow significantly, and be prepared to meet it. However, the most important thing is for the business community to do their best to help small and medium-sized enterprises. If we can take some services from them, but also to urge the Government to direct the first level of assistance to them, not to have to lay off employees and to be able to restart jobs.” “Emergency forecasts are very thankless, and Damljanovic says: „We are getting ready to start producing in full capacity by the end of Q2. This crisis will pass, it is important to show that we are human, to care for one another, to preserve businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises and to remain all calm and clean heads “.

Banks in Serbia have gone through various crisis situations and, according to Slavko Carić, CEO of Erste Bank, are highly capitalized, highly liquid and impact resistant.

“The lack of income from the banking sector will be large but not dramatic. We will have a reduced inflow of money, but none will be in trouble to remain liquid. We have two priorities – employee health, and then to maintain the function of payroll and liquidity in the system so that the economy can continue to function.”
Business flows must not stop, and the financial part is an essential part. “The National Bank of Serbia has issued a moratorium on all loans, which is a measure that I welcome because I believe that both the economy and the citizens of the burden should be released through payment of obligations. On the other hand, all measures that are broad-spectrum, are not good enough because we have a part of the economy that normally works and provides itself with liquidity, and those others that are facing the edge of serious problems. We need to come up with more measures that will have a wider range than this. ”

Orion Telekom has introduced a series of measures to make it easier to adapt to the new situation. “The amount of data flowing through the network has tripled in the last week, we are preparing for an even greater increase in traffic. It is important for us to maintain our income levels, as we had a 20% drop yesterday. Also, it is important that we maintain processes and procedures to keep clients safe and give them enough information about what we are doing on our part to eliminate that fear of contagion, “says Slobodan Djinovic, director of Orion Telekom.