Ten Great Strategies For Today’s Climate

This is a challenging time to be in business but there lies the opportunity. I’ve listed 10 specific characteristics of downtimes and 10 positive strategies that embrace and capitalize on them.

MCTS Certification, MCITP Certification

Microsoft IBM Exam Training, IBM Certification  and over 2000+
Exams with Life Time Access Membership at https:://www.actualkey.com

More time to create a focused business: Use this slower paced market to revisit the business you are in – what defines you. This is the perfect time for repositioning, selling off non-core subsidiaries, sharpening up product road maps and value propositions.
Flight to price and quality: Now is the time to revisit your product mix and pricing strategies. Buying behavior changes dramatically in a recession. Lower priced versions of your product or subscription based business models may be relevant to ease customer cash flow pain.
Measuring the signals is vital:> Mistakes made in downtimes can prove fatal.
Convert your Accounts Department into a Metrics Center. Trap and visualize your key performance indicators. Audit the signals and constantly interpret the significance to your strategies.
Acquisitions just got cheap: PE ratios of the majority of public companies are in single digits and the valuations of private companies are low. Consider a proactive approach to acquisitions by building a robust acquisition process that is proven to work.
The “C” level suite just got a free pass to visit their customers: Never has there been a better time for the inner cabinet to visit their customers to understand the specific issues challenging them. It’s not only productive, it’s essential for shaping strategy. Define your engagement strategy and get on site.
Value Propositions must improve a customer’s performance: Receiving a purchase order, confirming a big deal is very satisfying but it’s not enough. You need to be invested in the improved performance that will be achieved because your customer uses your product. Does your sales process achieve this?
Curiosity & Urgency of managers dramatically increased: Well it certainly should have. This new level of alertness (perhaps it’s fear) needs to be channeled to produce results. Difficult projects shelved in better times are prime candidates for this energy. Staff want to be effective and busy to get things moving again. Tap into this momentum.
People and tasks are mis-aligned: Now is the time to think like a start-up. The key –Define Performance Profiles that your company needs to be executed, not job specs but tasks that need to be done well. This will cause old jobs to be merged and new jobs to be created.
Silo Management is broken: Urgent initiatives will fail without cross-functional support. Company visions need to inspire and flow across functions. Build cross functional teams to execute top priorities.
Competition thins out: It might be difficult to create double digit growth but you can grab market share. The best companies don’t just survive bad times; they grow and develop into more robust and valuable businesses.

As an experienced business leader, Ian Smith is passionate about maximizing the potential of fast-growing companies. The Portfolio Partnership offers Corporate Development Services on an advisory, operational or investment model. Specifically we execute growth strategies by repositioning companies organically and/or by acquisition.

Ian was educated in Scotland, earning a BA degree from the University of Strathclyde and qualified as a Chartered Accountant of Scotland with Grant Thornton. Post qualification he joined Thomson the publishing giant and became one of their youngest divisional Finance Directors at 26 and was awarded the prestigious, UK Accountant of the Year ahead of many experienced FDs. From 1988 to 2000 he successfully built up two major boutique M&A advisory firms, Livingstone Guarantee and Capita Corporate Finance. During this period he completed over 40 acquisition, disposal or finance transactions, many cross border, many in the technology sector. He assisted dozens of entrepreneurs execute their vision.

In late 2001 he moved to the states to successfully reposition and grow Teamstudio, an IBM business partner with HQ in Beverly, MA and offices in the UK and Japan. During the next 5 years the top line was grown by over 45% and losses were turned into EBITDA of over $10m. high achiever, Ian expects the highest performance from his staff but always mixed with a Glaswegian sense of humor!

HP server revenue falls in turbulent quarter, Gartner says

Worldwide server revenue grew 5.2% in the third quarter but declined for Hewlett-Packard (HP), Gartner Inc. said in a report on server sales during the quarter that ended Sept. 30.

Cisco CCNA Training, Cisco CCNA Certification

Best HP Certification Training and HP Exams Training  and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

HP’s quarter was a restless one. It fired one CEO and hired another and left the market wondering whether it was going to sell or spin-off its PC division, a move it later rejected.

In this same quarter, IBM’s revenue share of the worldwide server market reached $3.85 billion, a 3.5% increase from a year ago. That gave it 29.7% of the worldwide market, nudging it ahead of HP for the top spot.

HP’s server revenue, just over $3.8 billion, declined 3.6% from a year ago, leaving it with 29.3% of the world’s market, according to Gartner. Third place Dell, meanwhile, grew 6.3% in server revenue during the period to more than $1.9 billion; it now has 14.7% share of the worldwide market.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay who was appointed in September as HP’s new CEO, told financial analysts last week that HP needs “be simpler, clearer, and more consistent — no more surprises.”

Whitman cited the importance of innovation in selling products. Pointing to HP’s recent introduction of low energy servers, Whitman said the company is increasing its investment in research and development.

HP has been hurt by Oracle’s decision to discontinue software development on the Itanium processor, the company acknowledged.

“Our ability to close deals has been impacted by Oracle’s Itanium decision,” said HP’s CFO, Cathie Lesjak, said during last week’s call.

Gartner said that RISC-based systems and Itanium servers declined 6.8% worldwide, but vendors overall saw revenues increase 3.5%. Oracle Corp., which picked up Sun Microsystems’ SPARC line, was in fourth place in revenue on Gartner’s list, with nearly $764 million in server revenue. It had 6.2% of the market, unchanged from a year ago.

When measured by server shipments, HP saw a 3.1% decline in the third quarter to 693,265 shipments. It remains the leader in that category, followed by Dell, which increased shipments by 3.2%, to 517,867, and IBM, which saw no percentage change in shipments. IBM had 287,507 shipments, according to Gartner.

Market share as measured by shipments put HP at 29.2% of the market, Dell, 21.8% and IBM, 12.1%, Gartner said.

In Western Europe, beset by a financial crisis, server sales fell nearly 5%; that decline was offset by gains in other regions, including in Eastern Europe.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said that he can’t definitely attribute HP’s server revenue decline to its board level issues, but said it is possible that some businesses held off on orders in response. He cited other issues affecting HP’s server sales, namely the decline in Unix and Oracle’s Itanium decision, as contributing factors as well.

Unix, RISC and Itanium server revenue for HP fell 18.5% in the quarter, while IBM revenue grew by 27%. Oracle revenue in this category fell 11.6%, according to Gartner.

Hewitt said HP’s third quarter “is likely to be something of a temporary glitch” that he expects the company to move past.