By Robert W. Bradford, President/CEO One of the hardest things to get right, strategically, is the true value of your product or service. This is understandable, since the only true measure of value is what an individual customer will pay at a specific point in time. Most of us look at our costs- commodity based […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Strategic Planning Expert How is your total new product development process performing for your company? There are a number of elements to consider before answering this question. Elements of the analysis should likely include: Market Intelligence sufficiently equipped to provide well-documented and well-thought-out analyses of potential new products and […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has not hit its development milestones, causing Boeing to take a $2.5 billion charge against earnings. What happened? Key to Boeing’s past success has been its ability to achieve its “big hairy audacious goals or BHAGs” (from Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras). In the 1950s […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison “As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody’s Investor Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”[1] Banks failing, real estate loans made […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant We often get questions asking what the difference is between a Business Plan and a Strategic Plan. The first difference is there is a significant difference in intent. A Strategic Plan is focused on improving a company’s performance, exploiting opportunities and building market share. A Business Plan is most […]
Continue readingBy Robert W. Bradford, CEO/President The other day I was talking with a CEO about building strategic alignment between business units in his organization. I was intrigued, because my questions about the company’s strategic competency yielded a history of the company – but no clear sense of strategic competency. In other words, the CEO knew […]
Continue readingby Denise A. Harrison, Vice President Smaller companies often feel dwarfed by the giants in their industry, especially during tough times. Often industry giants are better at weathering economic downturns with their wide array of resources. But Arena Resources’ strategy not only allowed the company to survive this economic downturn, but turn in exceptional performance […]
Continue readingby M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant How many tales are told about people who are very good at a particular job within a company, who are promoted beyond that position and then fail? There must be many examples of this phenomenon that are told time and time again. There is even a descriptor: The Peter […]
Continue readingBy Robert Bradford, President/CEO In my earlier posting about evaluating acquisition targets, I discussed four common approaches to evaluation a company: market value, asset value, operating value and strategic value. Today we will look at the exact approaches to market value and asset value, with objective formulae. First, market value. The objective numbers for this […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Vice President It is often argued that strategic planning processes miss industry shifts due to a myopic focus on existing customers and market segments, as well as existing products and product lines – but is this correct? NO! While market analysis and customer segmentation are important to any strategic plan, it is […]
Continue readingBy Robert W. Bradford, CEO Even with a strategically appropriate acquisition, price is an issue. In the end, one could argue there are only two prices that matter in an acquisition offer: the price offered by the buyer, and the price that the seller is willing to accept. Reality is a bit more complicated than […]
Continue readingBy Charles L. Bradford, Founder and Chairman Recession or Depression Are we in a recession or a depression? Whatever we call it is only a matter of semantics and really doesn’t matter. The fact is that the economy is off by about 15% and still heading down. What really matters is that businesses are […]
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