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To: All employees
From: Senior Management
The past year has been a financial challenge for the Company. The
revenue for the first 2 months of FY 2010 is below budget. It is
imperative that we save cash and minimize spending.
The following cost savings measures are being taken:
1. Continue the suspension of salary increases
2. Maintain the hiring freeze
2. Minimize capital expenditures
3. Stop company 401K contributions (match and nondiscretionary
contributions) for FY 2010.
The 401K contribution will be our first priority of restored cuts once
profitability is attained.
continue to be conscious of the need to minimize spending.
---
Now, if it were me, I'd say that the really *imperative* thing is that
we need to START MAKING SALES. Because, you know, if nobody is paying us
then it is mathematically impossible to break even, never mind profit.
The company seems to be placing a huge amount of emphasis on minimising
costs (at any cost), improving efficiency and increasing staff training.
Which seems silly to be, because none of these things are the problem.
The *problem* is that just down the hall from me, we have 35 staff
standing around doing nothing because WE HAVE NO WORK. I'm not sure what
it costs to pay 35 highly skilled stuff to do nothing, but I'm guessing
it's not cheap.
We can provide training until our people are world-renouned experts in
their field. And we can look for ways for them to do nothing as
efficiently as possible. But we /still/ aren't going to make any money.
WE NEED TO START MAKING SALES. I really don't understand why nobody in
senior management seems to comprehend this. Without sales, we can't do
our jobs. It's that simple.
Sure, I can appreciate that until we start getting those sales, we need
to save money, or we'll just go out of business. But seriously, all this
emphasis on internal affairs seems rather misplaced. What we urgently
need to focus on is making customers give us their custom, so we have
money coming in...
(It's not as if we've lost business *because* of staff training or work
inefficiency. Indeed, a year or two ago, the UK was the *only* site
actually showing a net profit. But having spent the last year or so with
an empty order book, the whole company is feeling the pinch.)
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Invisible escreveu:
> Now, if it were me, I'd say that the really *imperative* thing is that
> we need to START MAKING SALES.
Of course, that's the hard part. No one knows for sure how to get it to
work.
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] dev null> wrote in message
news:4b1fb8ca$1@news.povray.org...
> Now, if it were me, I'd say that the really *imperative* thing is that we
> need to START MAKING SALES. Because, you know, if nobody is paying us then
> it is mathematically impossible to break even, never mind profit.
I used to work as a software developer for a company that sold third party
software which we then enhanced. We also provided the hardware and network
support. We went a year without any significant sales, and then the cutbacks
started. I kept pestering the president about why we weren't making sales,
and kept getting blown off. I left about six months later for a job that
paid better and had better opportunities. About three months after that, the
entire management team was gone and the owner had completely switched the
company's focus, to selling phone systems, IIRC.
Gotta bring in the money, and that's a fact.
--
Jack
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> Now, if it were me, I'd say that the really *imperative* thing is that we
> need to START MAKING SALES.
First you need to figure out why you aren't making sales. Why are your
customers choosing your competitors instead of you? I heard/read a quote
somewhere that the only way to remain profitable over the long term is to
learn faster than your competitors.
> The *problem* is that just down the hall from me, we have 35 staff
> standing around doing nothing because WE HAVE NO WORK. I'm not sure what
> it costs to pay 35 highly skilled stuff to do nothing, but I'm guessing
> it's not cheap.
Hehe, imagine how much it costs to have multi-billion dollar factory *not*
running for a few days. In most cases it's more profitable (ie you make a
lower loss) if you fill the factory by selling stuff below cost price
compared to not making anything at all. It's a pretty complex task to plan
how to run a factory to maximise profit.
> WE NEED TO START MAKING SALES. I really don't understand why nobody in
> senior management seems to comprehend this. Without sales, we can't do our
> jobs. It's that simple.
Don't you have a sales/marketing department there that is on the case?
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Now, if it were me, I'd say that the really *imperative* thing is that
> we need to START MAKING SALES. Because, you know, if nobody is paying us
> then it is mathematically impossible to break even, never mind profit.
Posting the idea here is really going to help the company's situation.
--
- Warp
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scott wrote:
> First you need to figure out why you aren't making sales. Why are your
> customers choosing your competitors instead of you? I heard/read a
> quote somewhere that the only way to remain profitable over the long
> term is to learn faster than your competitors.
From what I can tell, customers just aren't placing any business with
*anybody*. Apparently all our competetors are in trouble too. (Or at
least, this is what I have been told. I don't know the reliability of
this information.)
As far as I can tell, the UK General Manager and the UK sales guy quit
almost simultaneously, and since then our order books have seemingly
been empty. We've got quadruple the number of sales people working
Europe compared to before, but we're not getting many orders. (And
*then* of course the global financial crisis happened...)
I might be imagining things. That's just how it looks from my desk. UK
sales guy quits, the lab slowly empties, and it's been deathly quiet
ever since.
> Don't you have a sales/marketing department there that is on the case?
We do.
I've yet to hear anything about what they propose to do about all this.
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Warp wrote:
> Posting the idea here is really going to help the company's situation.
Yep. About as much as staff retraining, anyway... ;-)
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On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:48:42 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 1. Continue the suspension of salary increases 2. Maintain the hiring
> freeze
> 2. Minimize capital expenditures
> 3. Stop company 401K contributions (match and nondiscretionary
> contributions) for FY 2010.
Wow, I didn't know you work for Novell now. (Seriously #1 and #3 on this
list are things they instituted this year for us)
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:48:42 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>
>> 1. Continue the suspension of salary increases 2. Maintain the hiring
>> freeze
>> 2. Minimize capital expenditures
>> 3. Stop company 401K contributions (match and nondiscretionary
>> contributions) for FY 2010.
>
> Wow, I didn't know you work for Novell now. (Seriously #1 and #3 on this
> list are things they instituted this year for us)
Ah, then perhaps you can tell me... WTF does #3 mean?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Ah, then perhaps you can tell me... WTF does #3 mean?
401(k) is the section of the tax law in the USA that says money saved for
retirement doesn't get taxed until you retire. It's like rules for a pension.
Many companies will say that if you put $500/month in for your retirement,
they'll add another $250/month to that for you.
This email says they're stopping that.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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