MUMBAI, November 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
Make Headway in a Volatile Market and Improve Profitability
BMGI India, as Knowledge Partner in the 'Premier Round Table SME Summit', held at Pune on November 15th, 2013, 'Charts a Roadmap for the Transformational Growth of SME's'. The event, organised by ICICI Bank and TSPL, saw representation from respected industry bodies such as CII, MCCIA as well as senior leaders from diverse SMEs of repute that included companies such as Eclipse, M Tech Innovations, AASK Precision Engineers, Mogora Cosmic, Unitron Energy Systems, GREATWELD Steel Grating, V R Coatings, Mittal Precision, Dia Aluminium India, C-Tech Engineers, Jayashree Group and PANSE Group amongst others.
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As part of the summit, BMGI India provided a roadmap to the SME sector on how to 'Make Headway in a Volatile Market & Improve Profitability'. "The SME's of today are primed to be the leaders of tomorrow," said Mr Naresh Raisinghani, CEO & Executive Director, BMGI India. He showcased a roadmap that would enable their evolution into tomorrow's leaders, in the face of the challenges faced by the SME sector in today's environment. Mr Raisinghani recommended four critical drivers for the sector in order to not just manage for today, but to excel and make profitable growth happen consistently in the face of uncertainty and volatility. The drivers stressed on were cost reduction, sales improvement, strategic expansion and changing the orbit.
Giving credence to the saying, "Well begun is half done", Mr Raisinghani strongly advocated selecting the right opportunity areas for the first driver on 'Cost Reduction'. He advised on selecting critical and chronic issues as well as setting aggressive targets that would pave the way for breakthrough results in reducing costs. His ideas revolving around reducing variable costs, improving manpower productivity, reducing material costs and improving OEE, were well-received by the diverse participants.
As part of the driver on 'Improving Sales', Mr Raisinghani shared levers for revenue growth that included enhancement of current price points, increasing sales productivity and improving customer satisfaction. Through a case, Mr Raisinghani highlighted how a comparison of price with competition and subsequent price alignment, enabled a medium-sized company to expand their revenues substantially and that too, without impacting the business volumes.
Stressing on the need to go beyond one's current paradigms, Mr Raisinghani talked about the need for 'Strategic Expansion'. This, he highlighted, could be achieved by adding new product/service lines, entering newer geographies and expanding distribution channels. He illustrated this by sharing a client's journey, who witnessed multi-fold improvement in revenues and a 100% improvement in profits through reaching out to newer geographies and moving from solution selling to manufacturing, amongst other strategic initiatives.
The last driver on 'Changing the Orbit' lay a strong emphasis on Radical Business Transformation. As part of this driver, Mr Raisinghani advocated on the need to innovate new products/services, consider external investments and acquisitions and lastly, engaging a professional management team to run the business. He shared how a container manufacturer client through structured innovation designed an innovative product which was considered as one of the most innovative packaging in the last hundred years.
Mr Ashish Vij, COO - Pigments Division, Sudarshan Chemicals showcased how their organization countered a slow-down of over 5 years, after several years of rapid growth. During this phase, the organization critically looked at complete operations that eventually led to planned improvement initiatives for driving profitable business growth. He shared that initially they were only identifying and filling gaps through efficiencies improvements.
Mr Vij shared that they realized multi-fold success when improvement initiatives were tied to business objectives. Driving specific initiatives in capacity improvement with a greater focus on flexibility and fast changeovers resulted in high bottom line impact at their plants. Having realized bottom-line benefits, Sudarshan continuously invests in excellence initiatives to turn their facilities into world class ones.
Endorsing Mr Raisinghani's perspective on strategic expansion and the importance of innovation, he stressed on how looking beyond the Indian market provided a larger opportunity for business growth given that Indian firms accounted for only 3% of the global pigment market. Hence, they chose to aggressively expand their presence overseas in America, Europe. He also shared how their strategic choice on larger focus on the Rest of World brought significant improvement in revenues. On Innovation, Mr Vij highlighted how their expansion into global markets was supported with new pigments that were created as a result of a specific innovation drive.
Today, Sudarshan aspires to become the fourth largest pigment manufacturer in the world by 2015. In order to support this global ambition, they have to set up a robust global supply chain and that requires them to set up newer facilities outside India - for example they have set up a new plant at China and they are further leveraging their talent for Innovation to focus on the new lines of business and high performance pigments.
The event was concluded by a panel discussion that was moderated by Mr Raisinghani. The discussion aimed to provide specific inputs to the SME sector on their business. Some of the perspectives as shared by Mr Ashish Bafna, ICICI Bank and Mr Muzammil Patel, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu during the discussion were 1) Hedging can be considered to reduce rupee risks 2) SME's should initially use improvement tools like lean six sigma to create savings which can be ploughed back as investments for future opportunities 3) Capex Investments should be made cautiously or deferred 4) Larger investments should backed by thorough due diligence and strongly backed by numbers.
The event served as an enabling platform for small and medium enterprises providing them insights on taking their organizations to the next level.
About BMGI
Breakthrough Management Group International (BMGI), a global consulting firm with a strong focus on delivering results, partners with organizations in various stages of their business life cycle to transform their business performance. BMGI is recognized as the world leader in harnessing the power of cutting edge techniques in the area of Innovation, Strategy, Problem Solving and Business Transformation for achieving tangible business results. BMGI enables businesses drive growth and improve profitability. Headquartered in the US, BMGI has offices in 13 countries around the globe. BMGI has delivered cumulative benefits to its clients worth several billion dollars with an ROI of 5:1 to 20:1.
Primary Media Contact: Deepak Panda, [email protected], 91-22-40020045, 91-9987303383
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