From the Desk of Paul:

Difficult times call for ingenuity!  Revenue Generation is one of the five components of building a healthy business.  My peer advisory group chair often says, “No margin, no mission!”  Essentially he is reminding us that no matter what our “why” is as business owners, we cannot fulfill our purpose without creating a profitable business.  Without strong revenue generation, we have little opportunity to create a profitable business.  When the market we depend on to generate revenue responds to some circumstance in a negative way, it would be easy to just give up with a negative mindset that says there is nothing we can do in such circumstances but just try to survive; however, the reality is, those companies that learn to adapt and thrive under such circumstances will reap the benefits of our competitors inability to find the new opportunities created by the same circumstances.

Some companies have failed to survive the pandemic of 2020.  Others will fail to survive the next major economic downturn.  Those companies that do survive, or even better, learn to thrive, will assume the customer-base of those that do not.  For most non-commodity type companies, a product or service is being provided that our customers need.  That need is not likely to disappear under the pressure of some negative circumstance – it may be re-prioritized for a period of time, but it will not disappear.  When the smoke clears, the companies that are still available to provide the product or service will win some new customers as a result of their ability to survive or thrive!

My own experience as a business owner of a service company may serve as a good example of how revenue generation can be maintained despite a pandemic.  ITG provides managed IT services as well as Voice over IP, Security, Surveillance and Compliance for other companies in need of these services.  While many of our planned projects for existing clients were postponed at the onset of the pandemic, the pandemic itself created new opportunities.  At the end of the day, ITG uses technology to solve business problems.  Some common business problems that were created by the pandemic were:

  • Employees were required to work from home
  • Patients and patrons needed to be screened prior to entering facilities
  • Parents were no longer allowed to attend school events in person

These are just a few examples.  The necessity for employees to work from home created an opportunity for ITG to leverage some technology solutions to make that possible, such as additional PCs, laptops, printers, software (i.e. MS Teams and telehealth solutions) and more.  By demonstrating some expertise in this area, we were able to assist many businesses in their transition to a considerable number of key employees’ being set up to work from home.  One of our surveillance vendors quickly developed a solution to reduce cost and exposure created by the necessity to screen patients and patrons entering our customers’ facilities.  The solution included the ability to detect a mask, measure temperature and communicate with patients while not having the exposure or additional cost of in-person screening.  These systems were quickly rolled out to schools, medical practices and other businesses where this new requirement to screen people was suddenly a big problem.  Another vendor developed a solution to allow school systems to livestream athletic events so that parents and family members could safely watch their students participate in sporting events.  ITG was able to leverage experience in surveillance and media systems to roll this solution out to dozens of schools.

Another way to create some sustainable revenue generation is to seek creative ways to build streams of recurring revenue.  Most companies can use some ingenuity to start creating recurring revenue now, so that should some unforeseen event have a negative impact on new sales, there is still revenue coming in to sustain the business.

Ingenuity and adaptability are key characteristics of those companies capable of building revenue generation despite the circumstances.  Instead of just accepting any given circumstance, consider what new problems the circumstance has created and use some ingenuity to find ways to meet those needs!

As always, if you have questions or comments that you would like for me to address, please contact me at pmeadows@itgroupva.com.

Paul Meadows,
President/CEO