Sales Management Just Got Brighter and More Resilient during Covid-19: An Abstract

Covid-19 has made an impact on almost all aspects of our daily lives and organizations are no different. As their revenues got reduced, there has been a strong imperative to look for additional sources of new businesses, while still catering to the existing customers. The approaches for both these are vastly different and the pandemic situation accentuated this complexity. Among all the functions within an organization, the sales department has had to bear the maximum brunt during the crisis event of Covid-19. They were affected at several levels- employees lost their jobs as the revenues of organizations declined;almost all of them had to significantly strengthen their digital skills and had to cope with the new working arrangements. Facing customers with new and not very pleasant information daily led to lot of stress on sales people. Staying constantly wired internally with other departments, in terms of product modifications or revised terms and conditions for the business, was another reality. Though sales has changed from an operationally focused practice toward a strategically focused part of business strategy (Ingram et al., 2002;Jones et al., 2005;Leigh & Marshall, 2001;Storbacka et al., 2009;Williams & Plouffe, 2007), the Covid situation demanded high levels of both. This qualitative study investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic (waves 1 and 2) on sales management by conducting in-depth interviews of product and service personnel across three countries—namely, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and India. We draw on the sales effectiveness framework (Zoltners et al., 2008) and other well-established sales literature to analyze our findings. During Covid-19, the sales function played a crucial role and served as the "eyes, ears, and hands” of businesses: sales personnel rallied 24/7 to ensure customer referrals, customer loyalty, and customer delight. The sales process was significantly digitized and all the selling steps underwent modification. Overall, organizations became more innovative, agile, productive, and profitable during the pandemic. We recommend the use of a theoretical conceptual framework modified for sales management during Covid-19;we also list a set of 22 sub propositions derived from five major propositions, for future validation. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Evaluation of Corticosteroid Duration on Sars-Cov-2 Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

INTRODUCTION: Corticosteroids are standard of care for hospitalized COVID-19 patients requiring oxygen supplementation. However, studies evaluating the clinical impact of corticosteroid use beyond 10 days for treatment of COVID-19 are limited. We sought to analyze the impact of extending corticosteroid duration beyond 10 days on 28-day mortality, median hospital length of stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) LOS, mechanical ventilation (MV) duration, and secondary infection risk in patients with COVID-19. METHOD(S): This single-center retrospective study examined 139 hospitalized adult ICU patients receiving corticosteroids for COVID-19 from August 2020 to January 2021. Patients were divided into two groups: standard therapy (<=10 days of corticosteroids;n=45) and extended therapy (>10 days of corticosteroids;n=94). The effect of corticosteroid duration on outcomes was analyzed, with adjustments for confounders made by multivariate regression analysis. RESULT(S): 28-day mortality was not impacted by steroid duration (37/94 [39%] in extended therapy arm vs 22/45 [48%] in standard therapy arm;p=0.29). Rate of secondary infection was higher (40% vs 18%;p< 0.01) and median ICU LOS was longer (14 (9-20) days vs 9 (3-17) days;p=0.01) in the extended therapy group compared to the standard therapy group. However, median hospital LOS and MV duration did not differ between the groups (p=0.07 and p=0.34, respectively). After multivariate analysis, risk of secondary infection remained elevated in the extended therapy arm versus the standard therapy arm (40% vs 18%;adjusted p= 0.04);however, after multivariate analysis, steroid duration did not impact 28-day mortality (p=0.60), ICU LOS (p=0.10), or hospital LOS (p=0.06). CONCLUSION(S): Extending corticosteroid therapy beyond 10 days did not impact mortality at 28 days among a cohort of critically ill patients with COVID-19 but was associated with higher rates of secondary infection.

Framework for Evaluating Traffic Impact of a New Large Commercial Land use—A Case Study from Bengaluru, India

Indian cities are witnessing rampant growth in terms of population and economic growth. The urban population percentage increased from 28.6% in 2001 to 37.7% in 2011. Being a leading IT exporter, Bengaluru sees an increasing number of commercial buildings burdening the existing road infrastructure, leading to heavy congestion in particular areas of Bengaluru. This calls for an understanding of any upcoming commercial development before it is thoroughly established to take adequate measures to reduce the negative impacts. However, the Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA) using the traditional four-stage modeling cannot be used in the current context due to the impact of COVID-19 on the existing traffic. This paper adopts an improved methodological framework that can be used to evaluate the impact of traffic in any situation. An average of 6.6% percentage increase (maximum 25% on some roads) in V/Cs is observed before and after the new development on the adjoining roads. To improve the level of service, several scenarios are considered and analyzed to provide the best mitigation strategies. This improved methodological framework can help to evaluate a new development’s impact for any given situation, and what mitigation strategies and types of transportation improvements may be essential to maintain a smooth moving traffic with a satisfactory level of service. © 2023, Transportation Research Group of India.

New normal work: Through the lens of working women

COVID-19 has led to work from home (WFH) arrangement for many employees. Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this arrangement has been studied in detail both from a household perspective and an employees' perspective (with special emphasis on women employees). Aspects such as resource consumption in a household, how WFH has affected an organization, and the implications for working women have been examined. Households can now optimize resources based on the findings, and organizations can learn how to adapt to this new WFH reality. An in-depth interview-based qualitative methodology with 25 working women was used, in addition to analyzing their social media accounts and audio/video clips. This chapter will be useful for organizations to design work from home policies such as infrastructure, work timing, job motivation/incentives, role definition, and cybersecurity. Additionally, working women perspectives will be strengthened. The chapter ends by highlighting future areas of research. © 2021, IGI Global.

EVALUATION OF A TRANSITIONS CLINIC TO BRIDGE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT AND PRIMARY CARE

BACKGROUND: Suboptimal transitions from emergency department (ED) to ambulatory settings contribute to poor clinical outcomes and unnecessary non-urgent ED utilization. Primary care-staffed care transition clinics (CTCs) are a potential solution to reduce ED crowding by providing ED follow-up care and facilitating the bridge to longer-term primary care. This study is a preliminary evaluation of the initiation of an ED transitions clinic on 30-day ED and hospital readmissions. METHODS: This retrospective cross-sectional study included adults discharged from the ED at UC hicago Medicine referred to the transitions clinic between November 2020 and May 2021. Appointment attendance, frequency of care type provided, and percent contacted with patient advocate were computed to assess clinic utilization. 30-day ED and hospital readmissions were compared between patients who completed their CTC appointment and patients who missed their CTC appointment using a chi-square test. RESULTS: In the first 6 months of program initiation, 116 patients were referred to the CTC from the ED and around half (47%) completed their follow-up appointment. The majority of patients were of black race (90%) and on public insurance (81%). Almost a quarter of referred patients (22%) were contacted by a patient advocate for referral to longer-term care. The most common reasons for referral were wound check (top 3: cellulitis, abscess, suture removal) and clinical problem management (top 3: SOB, chest pain, covid). Wound checks were 20% more likely to be completed compared to clinical appointments (58% show rate vs 38%). Patients who completed their CTC appointment had a lower rate of ED revisits (15% vs 20%) but the effect was not statistically significant (p>0.05). No statistically significant effects were seen for CTC appointment completion on hospital readmission. CONCLUSIONS: Transition clinics may have the potential to help reduce excess ED use for ambulatory care needs, particularly if they can help facilitate patients being connected to more permanent ambulatory care sites and clinicians. In addition to ongoing analysis of this program evaluation regarding ED and hospital utilization, additional research is needed to investigate the factors influencing follow-up completion and identifying effective interventions for increasing appointment attendance.