**7. Conclusions**

The scenario that the pandemic will bequeath to companies will focus on their ability to create value, putting a strain on the effectiveness of their strategies and solidity of their business model. Although no regulatory requirement has been applied to all businesses (especially SMEs), the pandemic has highlighted the need to introduce new tools that may accompany a more traditional analysis of the financial statements. The expansion of the information basis presupposes the inclusion, when computing ratios, of tailor-made indicators in a company's reporting, set capable of effectively summarizing its going concern assumption, avoiding data duplication and redundancy, which could paradoxically hinder, instead of favoring, completeness and clarity of information. "Traditional" indicators, which mainly represent the company's tangible aspects, should be accompanied by some KPIs that complete the company's reporting process according to its distinctive characteristics and expertise, also completing the representation of components relating to relational, human, intellectual, and structural and risk capital.

The pandemic crisis, therefore, represents a testbed highlighting the importance of management control, of being equipped with a dashboard of financial and non-financial data, and knowing how to communicate them to stakeholders, showing whether the company is sound or otherwise and capable of coping with critical macro-and microeconomic issues that may have arisen as a result of the pandemic.

Communication on an ongoing basis will enable a significant information symmetry and paradoxically will allow companies to exploit "the lessons" learned in a period of generalized and structural difficulty even during the ordinary course of business, thereby becoming more capable of coping with potential critical issues that may arise and more importantly—doing it well in advance so as to avoid "suffering a new crisis" by trying to face and manage them on an ongoing basis, being aware of the fact that critical issues are an inevitable, contingent aspect that must be discussed openly so as to bring out problems, including potential problems, and identify corrective measures in due time based on a continuous improvement approach. This will allow companies, at least in potential terms, to avoid having to prepare weighty turnaround plans to get out of major crises, as the crisis will have by that time been broken down into its individual causal factors and the same may be considered, addressed and coped with more rationally and in a more systemic, but not one-sided and monopolizing, fashion.

*Corporate Governance - Recent Advances and Perspectives*
