How do businesses survive?

jsmoke

jsmoke

jsmoke

Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2012
Posts
11,259
I can understand a business like OCuk, it's selling sought after highly technical products, so hence a lot of demand. However there seem to be endless 'advisory' companies and a whole host of similar that don't really seem to do much, same goes for a lot of jobs in the financial sector, read about financial analysts or the like and they will tell you that they are just paper pushers who tell there clients anything that will make them buy shares.

As for advisory companies, they may have a team of 10, so that's 10 * £40k average = £400k per year on salaries, I don't get it, are they really worth their weight, maybe they are. Or take the video that's going around about the management bods and the techie guy, where the management don't seem to have a clue what they are talking about. Where is all the money coming from?
 
Politics. If I'm asked to do something that I don't know how to do, get a consultant in to tell me what to do and then blame them when it all goes horribly wrong.
 
Advising the government probably.

Because there's no point in having an army of civil servants if you can't get some decent advice.... oh, wait....
 
Have you just watched the wolf of wall street by any chance??

To be honest I don't quite understand your post. The title implies you are talking about ALL business, then you compare OCUK to 'lots of jobs' in the financial sector that operate like Stratton Oakmont....
 
When our guys go to a customers site to do some training on the software packages we provide the day rate is pushing £1k so that's £1,000 for the transfer of knowledge at a cost of next to nothing for us so almost pure profit.
 
Most big enterprises are a hive of ineffective pointless waste. It's not hard in most companies to save 500k. Christ, you could consolidate most companies suppliers across all business units and I bet you'd save a bunch.
 
Hard work. Good luck

I work a lot. My business runs 24/5 but I often work 7 days a week as I can catch up at the weekends without any distractions.

I also have a enormous responsibility to my 30 odd drivers who rely on me not to mess up so they can still pay their mortgages.

I'm one bad decision away from potentially ruining 30 odd families lives.

My business MUST survive
 
mattyg said:
Hard work. Good luck

I work a lot. My business runs 24/5 but I often work 7 days a week as I can catch up at the weekends without any distractions.

I also have a enormous responsibility to my 30 odd drivers who rely on me not to mess up so they can still pay their mortgages.

I'm one bad decision away from potentially ruining 30 odd families lives.

My business MUST survive
Click to expand...

Epic

When this gets made into a film, I will go and see it. :p
 
Ultimately a business survives by making more money than it costs to run the business. In the case of a manufacturer they make a product and sell it to a distributor. The distributor sells it to a retailer. The retailer sells it to us.

A services company is still run on the same lines. Their product is a service or specific knowledge that a person or company needs and is willing to pay for it.

In the case of a consultancy company they are selling knowledge and experience (and sometimes renting out people to work on a temporary basis) to allow another company to make money in a more efficient way.

In some cases they offer knowledge and experience required to fulfill a regulatory requirement. This is quite common in the financial industry where expertise has to be bought in to complete a new regulatory requirement or to audit something which the financial company itself is mandated to do.
 
Consultancy rates tend to be anywhere between 600-1000 for a day. A day is 8 hours. You work 12 hours and its 1.5 days.

Companies need to be audited, if they fail - they need to plug the gaps and the audit firm isnt allowed to do this so another company is brought in.

On and on and on and on
 
Knowledge as said, especially if you have a speciality.

I have just set up a consultancy business (1 man band at the moment) dealing with virtualization of user desktops. The particular area I work in is a rare skill due to the size of the vendor, but it's importance is often overlooked and therefore can kill project timelines and of course cost vast amounts.

I often work with clients that have £1m + projects and my services in this key area are much sought after. My advice and services don't come cheap either and I hope to grow the business to attract more consultants to train.

It is all about ROI, you pay me X and I save you Y. If you have this, then if you manage it well, your business should survive as long as the demand is there.

Hard work ahead.
 
randomshenans said:
Most big enterprises are a hive of ineffective pointless waste. It's not hard in most companies to save 500k. Christ, you could consolidate most companies suppliers across all business units and I bet you'd save a bunch.
Click to expand...

Funny that, as the majority of my role is cost saving, revenue generation and general improvements in efficiencies.

One of the projects I presented off my own back has already saved 4 times my salary in haemorrhaging costs.

Large businesses tend to have a shedload of functions, many specialist, that all need to interact with other business functions, and it can get very complicated, and thus inefficient. Usually it is companies who have had a massive growth spurt that suffer from this, as strategy tends to go out the window when all focus is just on getting more business quickly.
 
Souleh said:
Consultancy rates tend to be anywhere between 600-1000 for a day. A day is 8 hours. You work 12 hours and its 1.5 days.

Companies need to be audited, if they fail - they need to plug the gaps and the audit firm isnt allowed to do this so another company is brought in.

On and on and on and on
Click to expand...

This is a large part of my world and there is so much red tape it's unbelievable. Audit upon audit upon audit upon audit..... Some of the large consultancies must love it :(
 
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