Strategic planning is about preparing a business for the future. As we all know, a strategy should put a business in a position to maximally exploit potential chances and to minimize the damage of potential threats.
We all witness the worst financial crisis most of us would have thought of in these days. We also witness […]

Since many, many years an amazing number of articles, books and studies discuss CRM systems and their importance or effects on corporate success. Furthermore companies did spent large amounts of capital for implementation, training and very often for consulting when introducing CRM systems. But sometimes the best CRM system is a very good value for […]

Security and liquidity are important issues in bond market. Now the financial crisis and the general uncertainty (due to the subprime crisis) have an impact in the market for covered bonds (so called Pfandbrief). Dealings of them have come to rest.
In regular times securities traders generate their income from turnover – the more the merrier. […]

One of the basics to be successful in competition is to give the customer what he or she wants. Since this aspect is a basic it is very likely that your competitor will do the same. So what’s next? The answer is a little bit more complex and needs to stress factors like learning, training […]

I am back from my recent business trip to Istanbul. There is a saying in German which translated has the meaning of traveling would be equal to education. In this particular case I had to learn that companies still have a confusing understanding how to manage their customers. We have to keep in mind that […]

In this post I will describe the first steps and approaches of (small to medium size) German retail banks when organizing their strategic planning process. Some of these aspects are valid for all types of small to medium size companies; at least they offer the option to compare your strategic planning process with the banks’ […]

In this post I would like to discuss some aspects of innovation. In doing so I will start with a definition; after this I will present some aspects that organizations should consider when focus on innovation.

Term. The term innovation puts an emphasis on the first time business application of discoveries (business application here means invention, […]

DVD business is one the biggest profit makers in Hollywood. Taking this issue into consideration it easy to see why movie makers of the big media companies (e.g. Time Warner, News Corp., and NBC Universal) can be very happy now. The long term “format war” between blu-ray and HD DVD has come to an end. […]

In a competitive and dynamic environment it is crucial to stay ahead of your competitors. To achieve this position your organization has to focus on certain aspects like innovation, quality leadership and branding to create some kind of advantage. If your competitive advantage is established primarily on technology and innovation, patents seem to be an […]

As we know from several studies and own observations strategic planning can be a very hard business. In the literature a large number of ideas are available; some of them are very helpful. Others might be appropriate for a specific industry or even a specific organization. Sometimes it can be helpful to look beyond one’s […]