Corean Reynold was recently appointed the Director of Nightlife Economy for the City of Boston, where she brings a wealth of experience and a passion for fostering an equitable and thriving nightlife ecosystem.
10/04/2023
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Roundhead Brewing Company
Don’t miss our upcoming Government Affairs Forum with Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg. Register now!
10/11/2023
9:45am - 11:00am
Bank of America
Learn about new ways of utilizing the professional apprenticeship model to create diverse, sustainable, and scalable talent pipelines.
10/12/2023
10:00am - 11:30am
Edenred
Designed for mid-level managers and supervisors, this new certificate program addresses workplace well-being through unique, innovative, and actionable methods.
Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.
Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.
Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.
Our Economic Inclusion Committee provides strategic support around research, policies, and programs that are focused on building equal opportunity.
We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).
The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.
09/12/2023 -
09/16/2023
Greater Boston
City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.
BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.
For nearly 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.
The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.
We support small business through public policy initiatives, events designed to connect small businesses in Greater Boston to their peers and established business leaders, professional development offerings, and free small business advising.
Explore our mission and values to better understand how we are leading the business community forward.
Our member directory is your resource to discover, connect, and engage with Boston’s businesses from every industry and sector.
Business owners may be weary of navigating the myriad of challenges related to COVID-19 of late as the Delta variant has in many ways taken us two steps back in our fight. With that said, we know the uncertainty related to the pandemic may linger for months, or even years to varying degrees. However, some businesses have returned to the workplace, perhaps only temporarily, while others remain in a remote or hybrid work environment as we wait to see what the upcoming weeks and months bring.
Wherever your business may be on its path to a new sense of normalcy during which COVID remains a part of our lives to some degree, it’s critical to understand how to best serve your customers and keep your employees safe, while remaining nimble for the future and continuing to provide high levels of service. Let’s face it, ‘business as usual’ is everyone’s goal, but achieving it may have many different meanings.
Wherever your business may be on its path to a new sense of normalcy during which COVID remains a part of our lives to some degree, it’s critical to understand how to best serve your customers and keep your employees safe, while remaining nimble for the future and continuing to provide high levels of service.
Many of us experience Zoom fatigue from time to time but connecting with each other virtually brought a new level of interaction and a more human element to business transactions with our customers. Letting others into our homes brought down formal professional barriers. We all got used to “sorry about the mess,” “the dog,” “my baby crying” in a way that brought us together because we shared these challenges and faced them collectively. It also forced us to see one another in a new light, simply as human beings. For our customers and clients, it meant we were no longer just their banker or business associate. Because our interactions became more personal new bonds and stronger relationships were formed, connections that underpin successful client relations. As you begin to, or further take down the walks of your current remote environment, remember that COVID has in many cases demanded that we look at each other as people first, before professionals, and that trend is likely here to stay. Think about how this can be an advantage for you and strengthen existing and future relationships you will build going forward.
Many of our business customers adopted and rapidly added remote services driven by technology into their business operations. For many that wasn’t easy, but the benefits were real and can be lasting, providing convenience for customers and protection for businesses from financial, operational, physical, or social upheaval. Further, because of these quick adaptations to technology and other offerings, customers have come to expect and rely on multiple channels for transactions, large and small. Conveniences that drive speed and efficiencies, such as the digitization of accounts payable and receivable functions, continue to be adopted widely by businesses to ensure timely cashflow.
The pandemic continues to drive businesses and customers to trust technology about which many had reservations—necessity will do that to you. But having broken down resistance, now is the time to evaluate these tools to determine how they can enhance your business model, increase efficiency, and play a role in operational cost management. If you haven’t, it’s also time to reflect on how your business may benefit from an augmented way of operating based on technology adoption and lessons learned. Talk to your business peers, local Chamber of Commerce, or your bank relationship managers and be open to new ways of operating that will help you succeed both now and, in the future, no matter what may lie ahead.
Clients and customers will likely continue to expect these same conveniences even as we integrate back to more person-to-person business transactions and meetings. Continuing to provide these offerings and developing business models that can be scaled for disruption will be essential to continued success, preparedness for future business success, and customer satisfaction.
While not completely in our rear-view mirror, we all hope we’ll never live through the extreme challenges that were presented this past year and a half. But having done so, it’s critical that we all reflect on the positives of the steps we took to manage through and embrace and retain those initiatives that made us and our businesses stronger collectively.
In ways that few of us could have imagined, we now understand that the unexpected is inevitable. Having taken the time to learn how to adapt, overcome, and improve as we continue to face the COVID pandemic, we are all better prepared for the future. Most important is to remember that when the time is right, our goal cannot be to go back to business as it was before. The way many of us now conduct business because of COVID, how we serve our clients and customers, and how we utilize technology to do so must be here to stay. A “return to normal,” is no longer enough, we must put our lessons learned to use to drive our businesses forward.
Our guest blogs are written and produced by organizations within our membership. They are not intended to reflect the views nor opinions of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
Cris Sigovitch is Senior Vice President, Head of Treasury Management Services at People’s United Bank. In this role he is responsible for the strategy, direct oversight and expansion of the Bank’s enterprise-wide Treasury Management and Commercial Card sales organizations, working closely with the Banks’ product and operations groups to deliver best-in-class working capital solutions to clients.
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