The true test of a marketing program is to deliver products and services that are both competitive and profitable. To do this you need to understand the factors that differentiate your business from your competitors and focus on developing your strengths. In some cases that means enhancing your products or...
Increasing customer profitability can be tricky. Many companies offer customers discounts or free services to win or retain business. But if they find that the cost of providing those services or discounts exceeds customer profitability, the company has to make a difficult decision between cutting costs or losing customers. Using...
It took a loan from the in-laws for Chris Pegula to scrape together the initial investment, but his Diaper Dude diaper bags were a hit from the start. With that initial $36,000, his company reached profitability quickly, garnering distribution in stores such as Neiman Marcus, Target and Fred Segal....
Increasing a company's profitability revolves around the focal point of numbers and the ability to access those numbers quickly to implement a plan to reduce internal costs while increasing project profitability. Understanding where an employee's time is spent and realigning that time as necessary to match the project at hand...
Revenue minus costs equals profit. The equation is concise, simple and misleading, as most everyone who's analyzed profitability in detail can attest. Most companies have a pretty good idea of how much they spend on raw materials for each widget they produce. But those that dig no deeper into profitability...
Finding ways to manage profitability more effectively is a cornerstone of financial performance management. The paper asserts that CFOs can drive initiatives that will enhance corporate profitability in ways that go beyond the traditional 'bean counter' approaches. Today's approach to profitability management involves using more insight to uncover both unnecessary...
In today's competitive environment- innovative solutions, enabling improved operational effectiveness, are the key to reducing costs and driving profitability. New competitors continue to enter the market and drive down prices. Regulations rarely seem to be applied evenly across all types of service providers. The emergence of new technologies and applications,...
Insurance companies are facing a difficult financial landscape. Declining investment returns, rising claims and growing product commoditization all are contributing to reserve deficiencies and lower underwriting profitability, despite premium growth in some lines of business. Improved underwriting processes can reduce the substantial leakage that occurs at both the policy and...
In this paper, the author looks at four models of firm profitability: two taken from Industrial Organization, one from Finance, and one from the Economics of Exhaustible Resources. Only one predicts that there will be a positive relationship between firm profitability and the structure of the market in which the...
Revenues are down. Profitability has suffered. New customer acquisitions may have slowed to a trickle, and customer retention is in a downward spiral. But not everything is down in a so-called down economy. Pressure is up on sales managers to buck the trend and increase sales productivity. At the same...
Profitability defines business success. And every customer one interacts with influences the ability to succeed. A self-sufficient, high-value customer can increase the profitability while a less valuable, high-maintenance customer can become a financial burden. In order for the organization to be successful, one must implement the right Customer Relationship Management...
Properly sizing the LBL (location-based leisure facility) has a profound impact on profitability and long-term success. Unfortunately, the sizing equations are normally left out of the planning of many LBLs including FECs and LBEs, and miscalculations can be deadly. Too large, and the place will look empty even when it’s...
The paper provides the insight to the role of pricing strategy for a start up success. Being a “first mover” or “smart mover” is a great advantage. Ultimately, the survival of a start-up depends upon profitability. This rests heavily on its pricing strategy, that is, the ability to charge its...
Pricing spells out the amount of money that would be charged for a particular product or service. An effective pricing policy helps in encouraging initial trials and maintaining customer loyalty. Positioning of the product and the profile of the target audience are two important factors to be kept in mind...
This article talks about Transactions Analysis, Cost Driver Analysis, Activity-Based Cost Accounting, Customer Profitability Analysis, Product-Line Profitability Analysis, and Business Process Analysis, which are all “tools” for strategic profitability and cost management. This article mainly emphasizes on the prior work on strategic profitability and cost management, and also how the...
In the modern business era, it has been observed that companies are competing for people apart from profits. It is essential for companies to devise steps to increase profitability but it is also important to retain the employees that create the profitability. Hence, it is important for companies to devise...
From the executive summary: ‘The most important issue facing most managers in the difficult economy is making more money from the existing business without costly new initiatives. In most companies, everyone pays attention to profitability, but few companies have a process to systematically manage profits on a day-to-day basis. The...
In the overall marketing mix, price is the most important item that can affect a company's profitability. The paper discusses how to set prices and measure their impact on a company's business model. The focus of pricing is related to short-term competition or internal cost structure. Even if a company...
This analysis focuses on community banks in MSA markets, where the presence of larger, multistate competitors is significant. Pre-tax return on average assets is used as the measure of profitability. The intended aim of the analysis is to determine if and how community bank profitability is influenced by several different...
A balanced, oil recovery, artificial lift system improved well profitability by lowering operating costs and increasing oil production in problem wells in northeastern Oklahoma. Water production, with its associated costs and, in some instances, well servicing costs were lowered, as were electrical power costs. Five uneconomical wells were converted into...