Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

According to an interview with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz by Suttichai Yoon of National Multimedia, Asia itself has a huge domestic potential by having a large population base with savings and a wide demand for investment.

This is extremely true especially when your business is a service base and revenues are generated from services. Services business more or less focuses more on domestic economy compared to international trade like US or Europe.

In an article “THE CFO’S ROLE IN THE DOWNTURN”written by Colin Walter from PWC. He mentioned

Cash is king: Companies that came out of the last recession on top had an average net debt-to-equity ratio before the downturn of half that of the companies that were not successful. They also had more cash on hand.

and Taking out the wrong costs can be worse than taking out no costs at all.

I’ve meet business owners that focuses on cutting cost no matter what, the question is “where in the company should we start focusing?” Confidence on these questions comes from a reliable management information as cited by Colin that;

Reliable Management Information: The more volatile the market, the more you need to be able to trust your information.

Curiously, most companies stick with their same old reporting templates and key performance indicators (KPIs) because "this is how we’ve always done it". Forecasting and scenario modeling are critical in volatile markets.

Service companies are now likely starting to invest in building their data warehouse and investing in Business Intelligent to support their business needs in volatile markets.

Those already served or underway will benefit especially now as the economy is showing signs of up turn.. Those who don’t begin  to address this and get this capability will surely have difficulty to sustain

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Recently, I was helping a business understand some proposals offering services for implementation of management performance reports together with analytics capability. What we found, at the end of the day, was unit pricing was the major “criteria” for selection of implementers, regardless of the application, solution, experience and confidence in making the project successful.

If you have ever been to a doctor, which choice would at the end of the day cost you more? An experienced doctor or a “fresh” out of college doctor? For a doctor rookie, stomach ache could come from various causes, so to make his assumptions solid, he will send you to do several lab testes, which more or less would be included in the final bill. Compare this to an experienced doctor who’s been in the field for a long time. He could almost conclude (from conversations and statistical background of the area and patients behavior) the likelihood of the cause without the need for lab tests.

Another example is in the construction business. Which choice would cost you more between an experienced carpenter and a plumber who also said he can do the carpenter’s job? A construction friend of mine tells me that for every project he handles, he only relies on experienced workers, for in the long run it costs him less. Being able to manage parallel tasks and calculating the amount of concrete and finishing the project within the deadline is the critical requirements that can’t be learnt from college.

Although the solution cost seems cheaper while only measuring from the proposed price, experience tells me that they’ve made the wrong decision and will have to pay the price.

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As large companies continue to consolidate and look at ways to rationalize they inevitably focus to cut out the middle man. The falling out of Singapore International Airlines with one of their major agents, Flight Centre in Australia, tells the story of this type of change.

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 As social networking in business continues defining itself so rapidly we will see many large and small players circumvented if they ignore it.

 One thing I notice with many business peers, including CEO’s and business leaders alike, is they generally focus on what they understand well.

Social networks” as a relatively new phenomena is generally not one of them.

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How can we take holidays in the middle of recession. Just do it, I say and why not if you can get away with it?  It is is a great thing but you sure come back to earth when you find it  all there waiting for you. But I am back now and here is a quick round up the last month and some stuff on whats’ to come.

My  Quote for this month

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.    – Peter Drucker

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Last month over 7000 visitors come to read us and over 60% who stayed over.  As I am wrting this there are 251 people visiting now according to our blog meter. So it looks like we got something going which we  hope we  can keep up!!

Here is what we wrote about:

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“Our economic future is increasingly underwritten by the rise of Asia.”

It is interesting in Asia where lifestyles are good, the flow on economic slowdown has been less severe.

Something must be different?

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