Thinking straight for 2012?

With the most optimistic predictions indicating at best flat-line growth this year, our role in business still remains that of factoring in latest conditions and taking  action that will stand the test of 20/20 hindsight…

Apart from 'normal' competition, we need to cope with unprecedented forces at work in our markets including ‘making do’, delaying renewal/replacement, recycling goods via pre-owned, re-usable, second-hand sub-markets, with charity shops and pound-stores now becoming mainstream, all potentially reducing demand for our new products and services.   

All of these take on whole new meanings as savvy consumerism works its way up the pipeline.

We need to challenge everything to ensure we get demonstrable value-for-money, everywhere.

The age of credit is being replaced by selfishness as businesses struggle for survival by passing risk and cost back up the supply-chain via demands for extra credit, increased trade funding, anything that will improve competitiveness, all at the expense of other parties, any other parties… 

Realistically, in a flat-line market any growth has to come at the expense of the competition.

It is therefore time for really straight thinking in order to assess relative competitive appeal in the eyes of increasingly savvy consumers and  customers. We need to quantify cost and value by reflex, since without calculation and quantification, our reaction is simply emotional…

In fact, deep down, as everything changes and nothing changes, as always, we are on our own.

All we need is realistic optimism for 2012, in the firm belief that there is always room for a good idea.

All else is detail….