To: CFO Research Services
From: Senior finance executives
Date: Fall 2011
Re: Growth prospects
Dear CFO Research Services:
You may think from our recent response to your survey questionnaire,
entitled “Strategies for Better Business Insight,” that we see bright
growth prospects ahead.
You’d be wrong.
The real picture is more complicated. Although a majority of us
(52%) say that our companies’ primary business objective over the next
two years will be “identifying new growth opportunities” (and only 17%
of us say that “controlling costs to maintain profitability” will be our
main objective), this seemingly robust outlook isn’t born from a sense of
bright and abundant prospects. It is instead born of necessity.
Half of us—a full 50%—agree strongly that our companies “must
increase revenue in order to maintain profitability; cost reduction will
not be sufficient.” Another 30% of us agree at least to some degree with
that statement.
Furthermore, 83% of us think it’ll be harder to maintain profitability
over the next two years, compared with the last period, when the
economy was growing.
We’re pursuing growth because we have to—there’s little left to
cut, and we need to boost the top line in order to maintain profitability.
The pressure is on to make the most of new paths to growth without surrendering
profitability. It’s already tough.
And it’s about to get tougher.
Click here to download: http://www.epmchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Strategies-for-Better-Business-Insight.pdf
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