[Sheffy]

As regards clothing it is usually
men's hit first, then women's and children's hardly at all.

[tax-sorted]

I have a guide on how to survive the credit crunch. Send me a message with your email address and I will send you a link

[RedEvo]

So have I. Live within your means.

d

[leaderworld]

generally recession make its impact on the business also. If you do a market study then during recession time also you can survive.

[Succinct Solutions]

We have a number of companies that we are supporting though this ‘credit crunch’. So far this is just at the beginning as to most businesses it is just a wake up call for businesses to get ready. When working with clients we take them through the following steps for them to get ready for the recession and then work with then to grow through it from this platform. I suggest that you follow the same steps and then grow.


Step 1 - Find the Value
Sit down with a pen and paper and work out why and where you add value within your business from your customer’s point of view. What is it your customer wants and how do you provide this to them? What is your customer willing to pay for and identify where your customer believes that the value of your product or service is. This is starting point to understand what is fat and what is pure business muscle.

Step 2 - Add the Value
Once you know what you are doing at the moment that adds value in the customer’s eyes you need to improve on this offering. Adding value does not need to be an expensive thing but it does need to hold value to the customer. At Succinct Solutions we have countless examples of this. For example 24-hour phone contact at no cost to the business but just by the moving of staff working hours to guarantee on time delivery and full time availability to your customers needs..
Think of value in terms of Time, Quality and Cost of products and services. What do companies do that make you use them. Once you start looking you will finds lots of ways to add value to the customer and thus you will add more customers to your business. Customers pay good money for good value. It is the single best way to grow your business without launching new products or services.

Step 3 - Cut out the Dead Wood
You may have lots of product or services that you offer, if you do you need to find which are your Cash Cows (making you lots of money with little effort) and what ones are your Stars (making you money and with even more growth potential). Most importantly though you need to know your Dogs – those which are not making you great money and costing you a lot to provide. Cash Cows should be left to graze and make you money, Stars should be focused on and pushed by the business and Dogs should be removed from the business for the benefit of everyone.
The key is focusing your business on what is going well today and what will do well for you tomorrow and get rid of what’s holding you back.

Step 4 - Reduce the Waste
Have a good look at you business and identify where in you business you are not adding value. Where are you spending time and energy doing things that have no value to the customer? Some of them have to be done like book keeping but most, when you look at things with a keen eye, are just a waste that the customer gets no benefit from. By reducing the waste you will be quicker, more efficient, more reactive, easier to manage and most of all more profitable. Classically you should look for: -

Overproduction (making more then you need at the moment)
Waiting time (not processing customers or paperwork quickly)
Transportation (moving things several times)
Inventory (too much material or stock)
Motion (moving things that adds no value)
Over-processing (doing things that add no value to the customer)

Rework (doing things again because they were wrong the first time).

[rgbartlett]

Interesting point on not wasting money, from an IT perspective I've seen £1,000's wasted by companies who could ill afford it because they failed to competitively tender their larger purchases and service providers. Another common problem is taking advice from the same people you buy from, where their interest conflicts with yours. Get independent advice from people who have no interest in you buying/not buying (would you take advice on whether to buy a house from the estate agent selling it? No, you'd use an independent surveyor).

[who_me]

We're not in a recession... Am I missing the point?

The best thing you can do is stop buying into the hype of half wits who think they have the miracle ability of reading the future and get on with running your business…

[RedEvo]

Originally Posted by who_me

We're not in a recession... Am I missing the point?

You are correct, we are not officially in recession. We need two consecutive months of negative growth first. We've just had a month of zero growth and IMHO official recession is but two months away.

d

[Dymo King]

Originally Posted by who_me

We're not in a recession... Am I missing the point?

The best thing you can do is stop buying into the hype of half wits who think they have the miracle ability of reading the future and get on with running your business…

Maybe not yet but we will be.

While no-one may be able to 'read the future' we can certainly predict it, and some things more accuractely than others. I can predict that in 5 years time my current PC while be hopelessly outdated for example (it seems highly unlikely that the hardware industry will suddenly stop producing newer faster stuff, and the software industry stop producing bigger slower stuff that needs faster hardware to run it...)

While we can't predict exactly what will happen for any given circumstance, as business people we should at least consider the possibilities, decide how likely to ocurr they are, and either plan what to do if they do ocurr or take action now to mitigate (or take advantage of) them should they ocurr in the future.

Just 'getting on with' running your business on a day to day basis, without planning for the future at all seems like a recipe for disaster. While you wondering where all your customers have 'suddenly and unexpectedly' gone, your forward looking and more nimble competitors will probably have already taken action and be at least one step ahead of you...

[solutions4finance]

I don't think it ever hurts to re-assess our business and make sure that we are maximising income potential whilst minimising, or eliminating, unecessary spending.

Call it a recession or not, there is no doubt that spending patterns are definitley "different".