“Think globally act locally”

This is a famous tagline for most of the company especially on the expansion into the Asia countries such as Malaysia, China or India. We have read lots of success stories of the expansion strategies but I what I want to discuss is the companies which is still fail in this respect even they have understand the important of this tag or slogan.
 

I have read an article on why there is some multinational companies still fail after aware on the important of “Think Globally , Act Locally” approach. There are 3 main issues which is discussing in the article which is people, ideas and tools.

I do agree with the writer perspective because this is the reason why companies hired consultant, local employees or local expert. These local contacts are really important as it can speed up the expansion initiative of the companies. Ideally, the multinational companies will have hard times to understand the management differences between western and eastern. Reading or attending the culture awareness or culture management course is just a form of preparation and this does not guarantee in the understanding of the way of working in the Asia countries.

The second failure is ideas because of the cultural mindsets. Western and Eastern do have lots of different mindsets because we have brought up in a different way. Mindsets are totally different from person to person and this is the important factor to determine the failure or success of the company.

The third failure is tools. What does this statement means?  Initially, the tools here is focus on what is the tools have been applied. Assumption that all the tools of method are same is a big NO NO!!! Studies need to be done to ensure the right tools can be implemented.

ARE YOU READY ???

Is retrenchment strategy the fastest way to reduce expense?

Actually it have been a while I never update “Buyer Diary”.

Recently, I have been thinking why some company will agree to take retrenchment strategy to reduce expense. I believe most of us still remember that early 2009 many MNC have using the retrenchment strategy as a temporarily solution to reduce expense due to economic crisis.

When we talk about retrenchment, I believe the first thing come to our mind is retrenching the employees. Actually to reduce expense, the retrenchment strategy can involve withdrawing from certain products or service in order to make a beneficial turnaround. Besides that, back to focus on the company core competencies is one of retrenchment strategy as well.

Honestly, I believe we will have a tough beginning of 2012. There is lots of analysis stated that we will have a soft market in the beginning of the year 2012. We can start feeling the pressure of soft market due to the recent Euro Crisis and US Debt Crisis. Theoretically, these crisis have a huge impact to the world crisis because “The World is Flat”