Integrated Profitability: Examples
June 17th, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
This week the companion blog, Integrated Profitability, is devoted to examples:
● a WHAT example (Tuesday; June 15, 2010)
● a WHEN example (Wednesday; June 16, 2010)
● a WHO example (Thursday; June 17, 2010) <today!>
● a WHY example (Friday; June 18, 2010)
Two weeks ago it was devoted to describing Integrated Profitability from a daily, ongoing basis:
● WHAT it is (Tuesday; June 1, 2010)
● WHEN to have it (Wednesday; June 2, 2010)
● WHO needs it (Thursday; June 3, 2010)
● WHY use it (Friday; June 4, 2010)
The concept of “Integrated Profitability” has been covered in an earlier blog.
If you’re interested, enjoy!
Bill
William A. Stong
Email: william.a.stong@gmail.com
SBF&P # 8-01-02
Telephone: 925-202-6244
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
Integrated Profitability: WHAT, WHEN, WHO, WHY
June 3rd, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
This week the companion blog, Integrated Profitability, is devoted to describing Integrated Profitability from a daily, ongoing basis:
● WHAT it is (Tuesday; June 1, 2010)
● WHEN to have it (Wednesday; June 2, 2010)
● WHO needs it (Thursday; June 3, 2010) <today!>
● WHY use it (Friday; June 4, 2010)
This four-part mini-series will be followed the week of June 14th with examples:
● a WHAT example (Tuesday; June 15, 2010)
● a WHEN example (Wednesday; June 16, 2010)
● a WHO example (Thursday; June 17, 2010)
● a WHY example (Friday; June 18, 2010)
The concept of “Integrated Profitability” has been covered in an earlier blog.
If you’re interested, enjoy!
Bill
William A. Stong
Email: william.a.stong@gmail.com
SBF&P # 8-01-01
Telephone: 925-202-6244
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
Integration Challenges for Small Businesses: Part Deux
February 25th, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
Continuing from last week, integration is a good approach for small businesses, although their size makes it difficult to achieve. Here are some other challenges:
● Outsourcing to multiple vendors
For excellent economic reasons, many small businesses either don’t have some of the functions that can be integrated (e.g., formal performance evaluations) or have outsourced them to companies that specialize in particular functions (e.g., bookkeeping, payroll). If components don’t exist or they are run by another company, it’s very difficult to integrate them so that they seamlessly complement each other.
● Little leverage
Again, small businesses are small. Even if they have a clear, realistic way to integrate all of their business functions to increase efficiency, they have little or no leverage with the huge companies providing the (outsourced) services. In addition, most of the large companies providing these services must standardize their service offerings if they want to make money on massive numbers of very small accounts. Rigorous adherence to standard product/service offerings is the way they are able to turn a profit on small accounts.
Bottomline: for small businesses, keep “integration” in the back of your mind as your company grows. At the right time, and size, you will be able to benefit from increased efficiency, lower costs, and profitable strategic growth.
Bill
William A. Stong
Email: william.a.stong@gmail.com
Telephone: 925-202-6244
Integrated Profitability Consulting TM
Blog # 4-00-0055 © 2010
“Insight knowledge for Profit Maximization”
Integration Challenges for Small Businesses
February 18th, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
Let me introduce “Integrated Profitability.” It is a companion blog to the “Small Business Finance & Profitability” blog devoted to profitability reporting and related MIS. It is designed for large, complex corporations with deep and broad business models, and diverse profit dynamics. As such, many of the topics are beyond the typical small business. Note that the underlying business challenges and opportunities are the same. It’s just a matter of magnitude.
This week, Integrated Profitability introduced the seminal concept of “integration” as something that can yield tremendous bottomline benefit to large, sprawling, complex, disjointed corporations and conglomerates.
Integration is also a good approach for small businesses, although size makes it much more difficult to achieve. Here are some of the challenges:
● Less need
Small businesses, as the name implies, are small. There are fewer moving parts. The business model is less complex, the profit dynamics simpler. The range, depth, and breadth of the business are all less. Product and service lines are shorter. Customer bases are smaller.
● Scarce resources
If daily cash flow is a business’s number one issue, whether one has integration or not is hardly a concern. Achieving integration requires thought, time, and action. For small businesses, these resources are better spent on sales, acquiring new customers, managing expenses, and being acutely aware of what competition is doing.
These add up to much less that can be integrated. And, even if it were, there’s less benefit in terms of cost savings and future flexibility.
However, a small business that keeps integration in mind as the company grows might well avoid the mistakes of much larger companies who need to retrofit integration to their expanded, wide-spread operations.
Next week: Part Deux
Bill
William A. Stong
Email: william.a.stong@gmail.com
SBF&P # 54
Telephone: 925-202-6244
Copyright © 2010 Integrated Profitability TM
Subscribe to our blogs using either our 
