This is an important issue due to the fact that biotechnology is heavily affected by capital availability and recently, venture capitalists were reluctant to fund biotechnology firms. As Jeff Hirst said, “When it comes to raising capital today, it’s a buyers’ market.” Therefore, producing returns for our current investors and producing high returns for potential buyers was a key focus. A second key issue was the probability of successfully completing each phase of testing. For both Phase I/II and Phase III, if the phase was not completed, there would be zero sales and all capital expenditures would be rendered useless. Phase I/II seemed relatively routine; however, Phase III was much more complex and presented a much bigger risk of preventing FDA approval and eliminating all future sales.
DEVELOPING PROFITABLE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP. It is a challenging time for most business leaders today. Leaders are demanding their company’s grow and so marketers are continually focused on driving their products and services into the hands of new customers. Unfortunately this intense focus on attracting new customers has taken attention away from established or past customers. It is measurably more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer.
Also, their competitors are developing software outside the US, which is lowering the competition’s cost. Major software developers are developing competing platforms at the expense of the Bernoulli, which in turn is hazardous to Working’s market share. Another problem for the company is their PDA is “behind the times” and a “drain on the rest of the corporation.” According to Ms. Sobiesk, Bernoulli lab will need $18 million of upgrades to compete and regain market share. However, Stewart Workman, CEO of Working Computers, believes the funds would be better if used to rebuild market share in computer sales. Data Analysis Looking at the cash flow of the division (with and without the investment): A capital
Align needs to find the correct mixture of demand and supply within its own manufacturing process. Challenge The challenge for Align is that their sales demand is not as high as they had originally forecasted. As a result Align is overproducing their product, thus losing profits. The company sees the potential for growth however, Align is currently over producing a product at tremendous cost with few orders coming in. The problem is Align’s capacity is too high and has to be
Kudler Fine Foods Photography The pros and cons of outsourcing the photography to a professional photographer Kudler Fine Foods is a rapidly growing online retail business that needs photography services just like any other business. This makes the company reach a decision-making point on whether or not to outsource its photography services. Such an initiative has both advantages and disadvantages that company managers involved in decision-making must put in place before making a move (Tuck 2010). Cons Some of the disadvantages of outsourcing photography services include • The possibilities of losing total control over the process of the professional thus resulting to results that may not have been envisioned by the company owners. The photography process is always internal and in line with the photographer’s imagination, which an external party may not fully understand.
The mass market traditionally focused on generating “hit” products that occupy the head and neglect the low-revenue niches markets comprising the tail. The niche customers have different needs especailly for those hard-to-find product and they willing pay a premium to a firm that best satisfies them. Therefore, the overlooked niches provide a potential growth and profitable market for company and is unlikely to attract many other competitors. Furthermore, technology is dramatically changing the the way we live and we do business. As a result of consumer’s embrace of the internet as a shopping media and the internet has directly contributed to the shifting of demand of products from hits to niches comprising the long tail.
As a result, minor firms could not handle the pressure and compete as effectively as larger companies and thus, gaining shelf space amongst the different stores had become a huge struggle for them. Ultimately, manufactures to enhance strength and gain power in the retail market were forced to form alliances and partnerships with other consumer brand companies. Apparently, other channels such as internet and direct to consumer sales had not proven to be valuable alternate means as retailers would immediately retaliate by de-listing products and goods of those manufactures who dared going in this direction. Therefore, due to the established relationships larger firms had with retailers, had led smaller corporations to turn into more
A.G. Lafley had very little time to determine how he would turn around Proctor & Gamble after Durk Jager’s departure. Prior to Jager’s resignation, he introduced an aggressive restructuring program, which was designed to generate bolder innovations and accelerate their global rollout in order to double the company’s sales, and annual earnings growth. Three interdependent global organizations were structured by product category, geography, and business process. The initial reactions to this reorganization were extremely bad. Because of poor results, and sagging employee confidence, Lafley was faced with the decision of returning to the previous organizational structure, or continue using Jager’s new plan.
That is no longer possible if a company hopes to succeed. Now we must be global, and our competitors are the old ones we have always known, but also new ones, who are just getting started” (Wooland, 1996, p. 6). Globalization magnifies the value of a business considerably. “But greater value is not a given. “This is because the trend towards globalization can often be a source of confusion or uncertainty,” argues Drobis (1998, p. 34).
(refer to Appendix A) The last problem that resulted in Chiquita’s financial problems was that they decided to expand globally too fast and as a result, were pushed further into debt. This could have been because they decided to expand further into the global market for the wrong reasons. The company may have perhaps not known the market they were expanding into because they did not do the proper research. Alternative Courses of Action 1. Concentrate on the Americas 2.