Once in our industry it was enough to hunker down, cut, and freeze until the economy turned up or the competition shook out. Not anymore. In his talk, Joseph P. Truncale, Ph.D., CAE, President & Chief Executive Officer, NAPL, will discuss why we now have to create our own recovery and how we can get started. Among the topics Dr. Truncale will cover:
• Where we are. Recovery from our worst recession on record continues to be painfully slow and maddeningly inconsistent. Business picks up only to fall off again. And now costs are rising in markets that are still very resistant to price increases, squeezing profits further. Among the key statistics: while sales are up so far this year for 52.2% of the companies NAPL surveys, profitability is up for just 27.5%.
• Where we are headed. NAPL expects our industry sales (all sources, not just print) to grow by an average of 2.0% to 3.0% per year over the next three years, the first steps in recovering at least part of the more than 20.0% decline in sales since 2007. Absolutely no one is guaranteed a share of that growth, and no one will find growth in the same old places or by doing the same old things.
• Cyclical change and structural change—or why things aren’t going back to the way they were. We all know that our industry is changing. But we can’t understand where we are, where we’re going, and who’s going to make it unless we distinguish between two very different kinds of change: cyclical change, or the ups and downs of the business cycle, and structural change, or profound changes in the very nature of our industry.
• Picking our value proposition carefully. There are many ways to succeed in our industry. For example, we can be the lowest-cost producer in a commodity market or the provider of customized marketing programs. We can focus on print or diversify broadly. We can provide templated web-based services nationally or personalized services locally. We do, however, have to know exactly what we’re getting into. And we have to base our choice not on what’s hot or what the competition is doing but rather on what’s best given our specific resources, capabilities, and goals.
• Getting capital investment right. While the return to making the right investments is greater than ever, so is the cost of making the wrong ones. We increase our changes of getting capital investment right by asking the right questions. Among them: are we getting beyond the hype and best-case outcomes to what’s really necessary to make the investment pay for us? Have we considered how this investment advances our strategic objectives? And are we thinking integration, not just addition?
• Building a new labour force for our new industry. Getting better at what we’ve always done is not enough anymore. We have to cultivate a broad new set of skills, including strategic planning, marketing, IT, database management, and consultative selling. Since people with these skills can work anywhere, we’ll be competing economy-wide for them. How do we convince them to come with us and how do we keep them once we get them?
• Lessons learned from the Great Recession. If we learn from the upheaval and disruption of the Great Recession, we win. If we don’t learn anything, the Great Recession wins. What are the most important lessons learned? How will we keep from forgetting these lessons as memories of the recession fade?
• Creating a “Recovery Manifesto.” While the competition is waiting for the economy to make everything right, we’re going to bring our management team and key employees together to craft a statement of how we will create our own recovery. Examples of what our Recovery Manifesto might include: We will improve continuously. We will challenge our success. We will take nothing for granted. And we will not tolerate an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude anywhere in our organization.
