With every misstep (it’s not failure unless you fail to learn something) comes an opportunity for growth. Bobby Buford’s article introduces a 3-step approach that all managers should take when trying to scale a business.
A new category of competitor — low-price, medium-quality Chinese B2B upstarts — is shaking up the global competitive landscape.
China’s largest maker of medical equipment is Mindray Medical International Ltd.
Based in Shenzhen, the company was founded in 1991 to serve Chinese hospitals, which, especially in rural areas, could not afford many basic medical devices. From its earliest years as a maker of in vitro diagnostic processes and patient monitoring and life-support systems, this Chinese business-to-business (B2B) enterprise strove for a basic level of acceptable quality and versatility, and a high level of innovation: The company has consistently reinvested about 10 percent of its revenue in R&D every year. As China’s economy expanded in the 2000s, Mindray’s ambitions grew accordingly; it competed with increasing success in the global medical devices market, rapidly gaining market share by offering monitoring and medical imaging systems at prices that were typically 40 percent lower than those of most incumbents.
I was watching ESPN the other day while working out and one of the stories was about the Los Angeles Clippers, who after a start to the season that promised (and showed) great potential, have seemingly taken their rightful seat next to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers as the ‘other’ team in Los Angeles.
No one would argue that the loss of newly signed Chauncey Billups, a proven veteran with skins on the wall, was significant in curtailing the team’s ascension to the NBA elite. Still, they have Blake Griffin, one of the league’s brightest young stars whose aerial assaults on the rim are renowned. And they do have DeAndre Jordan, as athletic a center (at 6’11″, 265) as there is in the league. They also added the much-needed outside shooting of Mo Williams, who only a few years ago teamed up with Lebron James in Cleveland to lead what was before and has been since a mostly moribund franchise to the NBA Finals. And for toughness and the dirty work that doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet, I present to you the salty veteran Kenyon Martin. Oh, and by the way, Chris Paul, a perennial All-Star recognized as one of the top handful of point guards in the league, came over this season in one of the year’s few blockbuster trades. A lineup with talent, right? Young talent. Exciting talent. So what’s the problem? The coach!
One of my favorite lines of all time comes from the movie Boiler Room. When Jim Young, a young, rich, and cocky senior stock broker, played by Ben Affleck tells a group of upcoming stock brokers : “And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him?”
Starting a business process management project and choosing the right BPMS system can be a quite tricky thing to do, especially if your organization does not have experience on it. There are several ways to start BPM projects and there are many methods available to choose from. Here are some questions that you can ask…
The ultimate success of any commercial business is its ability to generate returns for its shareholders. Achieving healthy and sustained returns requires a deep and broad understanding of customer’ needs and wants and the enterprise capability to turn these into profitable services and products. The easiest way to express this requirement in corporate objectives is through triple crown capability – the ability to increase revenues, reduce costs and enhance service simultaneously.
The traditional way of measuring value and business performance of a company is changing. For an increasing number of stakeholders, financial statements and balance sheet information just isn’t enough. Emphasis is now on sustainability, especially related to reputational risk and corporate image. A sustainability incident, like discovering child labor in the global supply chain, can be extremely harmful to brand value and thus revenue and profits.
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…
All too often, finance departments face the same challenges at the end of every reporting period—whether it’s monthend, quarter-end, or year-end. The department must prepare financial reports and statements such as balance sheets, cash flow statements, income statements, and increasingly, management reports, as well as provide information about key performance indicators. On top of that,…
The benefits of cloud computing—a high return on investment, greater staff efficiencies, optimization of IT resources, and enhanced visibility and access to information— have piqued the interest of CFOs and finance leaders who are actively evaluating the risks versus the rewards of the cloud delivery model. Although a steady migration to the cloud is happening…