July 2008 - Posts - Strategy Muse

July 2008 - Posts

How they boost income: 31-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Tribune Co., media group comprising eight newspapers, more than 50 Web sites, 25 television stations, the Chicago Cubs baseball team and real estate and other holdings, unsettled by companies abandoning newspaper ads at an accelerating pace because of a souring economy and cheaper alternatives online: 1. It will build up its broadcasting and Internet...

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How they control cost: 31-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Tribune Co., media group comprising eight newspapers, more than 50 Web sites, 25 television stations, the Chicago Cubs baseball team and real estate and other holdings, unsettled by companies abandoning newspaper ads at an accelerating pace because of a souring economy and cheaper alternatives online: 1. It turned itself into a so-called S corporation...

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How they boost income: 30-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Tesco, the supermarket chain: 1. It aims to increase profits from its services (i.e. financial, telecommunications and internet services) from £400m to £1bn 2. It hired a new CEO for the services and a new head for the bank 3. It purchased Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) share of their personal finance joint venture for £950m. 4. It will expand Tesco...

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How they boost income: 29-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Procter & Gamble 1. It is using design thinking¸ which can be applied everywhere, every day to crack difficult business problems and change its culture - using broad insights; learning faster; failing faster. 2. It has held more than 40 design thinking workshops across the globe during the past year - half of the workshops focused on some pressing...

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How they control cost: 29-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Tata Motors, seeking to change the manner in which people in rural and semi-urban India travel has staked its reputation to make a supercheap car, the Nano with a price originally set at $2,500: 1. It will fit the car with a smaller 623cc-engine that will get 50 mpg. 2. It has done away with most of the high-tech gadgetry found in many modern autos...

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How they boost income: 28-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Dell, computer maker: 1. It is looking for new ways to expand beyond selling commodity PCs, notebooks, and servers. 2. It has changed its offering to customers from products with features to customized computing solutions. 3. It created a new "cloud computing" business to customize large orders of thousands of servers for customers like Facebook...

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Pick of the Week 9

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
INCOME BOOSTING STRATEGIES Independent coffee shops in the U.S. competing with Starbucks are taking approaches that Starbucks hasn't: 1. Some are serving coffee differently from Starbucks. [Lakota Coffee Co. in Missouri serves a latte in a signature large green bowl that requires two hands to hold and create a more at-home atmosphere than Starbucks...

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How they boost income: 25-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Microsoft, software giant, trying to turn around its limping online operations after failing to acquire Yahoo: 1. It will invest 5% to 10% of operating income on online operations, which might increase to 20% to 40% if it is successful - and continue spending until it gets greater scale 2. It will provide Web search tools to users of Facebook, and place...

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How they control cost: 25-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Lloyd's of London, the venerable specialty insurance market that brings together underwriters and brokers to insure everything, but with claims processing stuck in the 17th century that needed to be digitalized: 1. It sought out those members who were dissatisfied with the traditional procedures as digital evangelists. 2. It worked out a system...

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How they boost income: 24-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Amazon.com Inc., the world's largest Internet retailer, which sells products in more than three dozen categories, ranging from power tools to musical instruments. 1. It added electronics and digital-book downloads. It expanded digital sales, introducing the Kindle electronic-reading device last year to encourage book, magazine and newspaper downloads...

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How they boost income: 23-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Hedge Funds: They borrowed almost 15 per cent, or about 550 million, of HBOS shares, which faced intense pressure from investors betting on the share price falling, and sold them to be able to buy them back cheaper. [Short sellers borrow shares they do not own and then sell them hoping to buy them back more cheaply if the price falls. Prices of HBOS...

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How they control cost: 23-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe's second-biggest carmaker: 1. It has instituted a savings program to reduce overhead and fixed production costs by 30 percent by 2010 2. It cut 10,300 positions in western Europe last year, 80 percent of them in France 3. It will shorten vehicle development times 4. It improved quality to reduce guarantee costs [Click...

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How they boost income: 22-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Big Pharmaceutical Companies, facing fewer prescriptions filled, patent expirations, and FDA rejections of new drugs: 1. They are continuing to consoldate (Roche has bid $44 billion for Genentech, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has bid $7 billion for rival Barr Pharmaceuticals). 2. They are trying desperately to come up with substitutes for big products...

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How they control cost: 22-July-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Barry Callebaut AG, the world's biggest contract manufacturer and supplier of bulk chocolate, fighting a 40 percent jump in cocoa prices: 1. It uses its scale of operations to make products almost 20 percent cheaper than smaller companies 2. It has trimmed consumer businesses over the last year. It has reduced sales of its own brands of chocolate...

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Pick of the Week 8

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
INCOME BOOSTING STRATEGIES InBev an aggressive Belgian brewer, the world's second-largest beer-maker behind SABMiller: 1. It will buy Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., largest brewer in the U.S., for $52 billion to create a stronger, more competitive global company with an unrivaled worldwide brand portfolio and distribution network, with great potential...

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