BLOG by Avant-Garde-Technologies Corp CTO/CFO/CMO
Business innovation and Productivity
The 21st century will become known as the golden age of innovation. For better or worse everything is rapidly changing. In order for business to prosper, many things need to be changed. This requires a different mindset than the one that we learned. Certainly, the business, economic and financial principles that we were taught still apply, but they need to be incorporated with new management methods. Technologies, such as AI, will definitely improve productivity, but integrated management is also needed.
The board of directors (the Board) recognized that to improve performance, it would be better to make one person responsible for strategic and tactical planning, technology, finance and marketing. Although the Board did not designate a specific position, it did consolidate the CTO/CFO/CMO into one person. This has proven to greatly improve planning, corporate culture, decision making and implementation of new products and new business opportunities. It has proven that by consolidating these essential functions enables increased growth and profitability. The winning strategy for the enterprise has been to create a corporate culture for learning, innovation and performance. Avant-Garde-Technologies Corp is a conglomerate with many multinational business segments. It uses a matrix management system that relies on every person to perform at a high level and always look for innovation. Compensation is primarily based on performance. Most of the employees have more than one STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) degrees. The major challenge toward achieving more growth is the small number of exceptional STEM employees that are acceptable.
From Transactional to Transformational: Building the Business and Bond with Customers
The CTO/CFO/CMO formulates the strategic vision for the company and creates the corporate culture that fosters innovation and performance. The benefits of this structure have been to integrate these functions for decision making and providing the technical skills and financial resources necessary to grow revenue and achieve high profitability.
Consider how incorporating the marketing management with technology and finance enabled the company to achieve enormous growth and profitability. Acquiring market share requires more than just a good product or service. A company's success is heavily reliant on corporate strategic and tactical planning. Marketing strategies much by inline to effectively reach and engage its target audience.
The CTO/CFO/CMO has a pivotal role in shaping the destiny of a brand, and by investing smartly in innovative marketing tactics. This is essential to propel the company forward and secure a larger share of the market. This requires forward thinking and creating sound investment strategies to drive growth.
Data and insights are essential for marketing, but it can be difficult to justify the budget. However, by consolidating the CTO/CFO/CMO into one responsibility the value of data and insights the company avoid wasting marketing budget and efforts. Immersing oneself in the customer's world enables deep connections that transcend mere data points or transactional interactions. To form a deep connection, the CTO/CFO/CMO has implement the following in customer interactions:
- Empathise to understand their needs and emotions
- Anticipate their needs before they even ask based on their behaviours and patterns
- Engage to build genuine relationships that go beyond selling products or services
- Adapt to their ever-changing needs
- Commit to displaying a genuine interest in their successes and well-being
By consolidating the CTO/CFO/CMO the company has been able to transforms customers, businesses from a transactional relationship to a transformational one, becoming trusted partners and advocates to their clientele.
Global Disruption.
Our country and the world is encountering the greatest disruption ever. It does not appear that most business and people have any understanding what is happening. The profound changes are occurring the political, economic, business, technology, social, military, education and other segments.
It seem inconceivable that only a few years ago the USA was highly regarded throughout the world. It was well understood that the political environment in the USA was changing. It seemed like the USA was on the way toward achieving great prosperity again though the actions of the Trump administration. It became clear that government regulations were harming the country and making it more difficult to do business in the USA. Many regulations were eliminated to enable business growth. Energy policies were changed to enable the USA to become energy independent. Many economists believe that the USA has the largest oil and gas reserve in the world.
It was well understood that many of the people in the government were only interested in power and increasing their wealth. They did not care about the welfare of the people that elected them. They disregarded the US Constitution which has been the foundation of the USA and contributed to its prosperity. When the election occurred to determine the next president between Biden and Trump, the democratic party and its contributors did multiple things that were criminal to get Biden elected president.
Everyone informed reasonable person who listened to the evidence of massive fraud conducted by the democrats could easily determine without any doubt that it was statistically impossible for Biden to be elected President. This was proven massive fraud was done by creating votes from people who were dead or never existed, manipulating the Dominion Voter machine and software by switching votes from Trump to Biden. The local government people in swing states were bribed by the $500 million that the Facebook Mark Zuckenberg contributed to the election. CCTV caught many of these local government officials sending the votes over and over again to Biden. In some places, BIden had more votes that there was people to vote. It was observed that at times Trump was getting negative votes from the voting machines because they were switched to Biden. All the Bellweather indicators showed that Trump would be elected again. There is no other conclusion that could be reached by all the evidence that Biden could only be elected by massive fraud and disregard for the constitution.
The result of the fraudulent election is a major cause of this disruption. Most people do not want to acknowledge it. Everyone can easily observe that Biden is feeble-minded and others are making the decisions. He is unable to determine where he is or even the people selected for positions such as Sec of State and Sec of Defense. He often gets them confused.
Because the USA does not have someone competent to provide the leadership, great disruption is happening in the USA and the world. There are so many example of this that it would fill thousands of pages. The corruption is now brought to the attention of the American people and changes to eliminate this corruption will happen. But the harm done by the Biden administration will take many more years to correct the harm it has done.
If You Need Me - Dolly Parton
The new business model
Because technology is growing at an exponential rate, a new business model is needed. This does not mean that we disregard all that we learned in the University for our MBA. Rather we have to understand how technologies and those who use them will enable the business to grow and not fall behind. Strategic planning is essential to have a vision of how the business and economic environment will change. You don't want to trapped like the large auto manufacturers. They did not want to believe that EV will ever amount to much of their market. They now can clearly understand that it is to late to catch up with Tesla. Even though they had over 100 years of business experience, they failed to innovate much in their manufacturing process. Tesla showed them that building Giga factors and using innovate manufacturing technologies, such as the Giga Press, will enable it to manufacture more automobiles than Ford and General Motors combined. They will have to spend billions of dollars for new plants and equipment. Unfortunately, they will never be able to match Tesla's production capacity. The best they can do is to continue to make Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars while their market share continues to decline. Even if they build new plants, it is unlikely that they will ever achieve the economies of scale that allows Tesla's profit margin to increase far beyond what they could achieve.
In order to enable your business to grow and prosper, you should be always looking to hire the best talent from universities and provide the corporate culture that will challenge them to innovate and improve the business. That is asking for to much from companies that have a well established bureaucracy. However, if you can't change it is likely that your company will fall behind and may even just become a small niche company that just manages to survive with government support. It should be clear that unless a business innovates, it will slowly cease to exist.
Don McLean - American Pie
Macro Economic Environment
The economic conditions are going to create one of the worse recessions or depressions ever. If you learn about the BullWhip effect, you will begin to understand why this is something to be concerned about. Unfortunately, there is nothing that we can do to avoid the consequences. However, we can make plans for it and the adverse affects. A link to a YouTube video that explains the BullWhip effect is provided
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVf6Jt0dobw
Although there is nothing that we can do to avoid the consequences of the BullWhip effect, business management should begin making plans to have adequate working capital and the risks that will become apparent. This is not this best time to plan for growth, but rather to minimize the risks.
The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
Bullwhip Effect Factors that indicate a great recession is about to happen.
Supply chain disruption, excessive inventories, inflation, high interest rates and reduction of the money supply, decline in customer perception are factors that history has shown will occur before a major recession begins.
One of the most well known indicators that a recession is occurring is the "Bullwhip Effect" discovered by Jay Forrester. This happens when retailer forecast demand wrong and the gap between supply and demand become larger up the supply chain between the retailer, distributor and manufacturer. Most often retailers will make forecasts based on current customer behavior and order more goods as a safety net. This causes wholesales to respond to the retailer by ordering more goods also to have a safety net. The result is a large exponential effect up the supply chain. The bullwhip may also work the other way when the companies in the supply chain forecast wrong about the demand for the product will actually become. This cause them to have shortages in those products.
There are five indicators that the show the Bullwhip Effect is happening to disrupt the supply chain. Since retailer expect demand for the product to increase, they increase their inventories. This then causes Wholesales to increase their inventories and this causes Distributors to increase their inventories and this in turn to increase their manufacturing production. The five factors to pay attention are (1) Seasonality, (Business Cycles), (3) New Products, (4) End of life of products, (5) Unforeseen factors.
A fluctuation in point-of-sale demand of five percent will be interpreted by supply chain participants as a change in demand of up to forty percent. Much like cracking a whip small flick of the wrist - a shift in point of sale demand - can cause a large motion at the end of the whip - manufacturers' responses.
Unfortunately, all these factors are now happening and are getting beyond control to prevent the great recession.
The Battle Of New Orleans - Johnny Horton
Quantitative Easing
“Bullwhip Effect” happening in the retail sector will lead to the Federal Reserve reversing rate increases and its Quantitative Tightening policy. When inventory liquidations across the retail sector, result in a “deflationary tsunami” and “prices falling off a cliff”, the FED is likely to eventually pivot on its plans to increase interest rates and restart easing. Of course, not everything is set for a deflationary crash: don’t expect luxury items to see price cuts, and if anything, luxury prices for things like handbags and shoes are poised to keep climbing.
But while inflation is likely to persist in the ultra high, the implication for broader inflation is clear that most prices that make up the core CPI basket are about to fall off a cliff in weeks if not days. With upcoming core CPI prints set to plunge, which means that the only thing that will remain red hot is inflation, i.e., food and energy prices, the same prices which the Fed has traditionally ignored.
The FED is facing a dilemma realizing that the US is entering a recession – it will resume easing even in the face of $5-$10 per gallon gas prices, or to address the massive inflation issue that is occurring.
Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World
US Dollar is losing its status as the world reserve currency
The policies made by the US BIden admin to create sanctions against Russia are having the effect of causing the US dollar to no longer serve as the reserve currency of the world. It appears that these US Biden admin will benefit Russia. It also happened that Russia has created its own CryptoCurrency using blockchain known as the Golden Ruble based on the value of gold with respect to the Ruble.
The Russian Ruble will become much more valuable and the US become more worthless. This will direct effect the entire global trade environment. Inevitably it will mean the death of the dollar for global trade. The foreign reserves held by other countries in dollars are going to decline enormously. Instead of causing Russia to go bankrupt as the Biden administration sanction were expected, it will have the opposite effect in causing a great decline in the US dollar. With the large increase in inflation, goods from outside the US, such as from China will begin to cost much more for consumers. Now Russia will only trade its gas and oil only in Rubles. The EU will have no other option than to paid for Russia oil and gas and other natural resources with Rubles. It is expected that many countries will dump their US dollar holdings that were used for their payment systems. This will mean that there will be much more US dollars in circulation and will fuel inflation even more. Many of the large asian countries will soon be using their local currencies to make payment for international trade transactions. The US dollar will no longer be needed as in intermediary. The central banks of the asean countries will begin using the same structure to real-time bank transfers and central bank digital currencies.
The war with Russia and Ukraine will have major effect on the world's financial structure and economies. Many countries are not realizing that to protect their economies from geopolitical risks, they need to diversification away from the US Dollar. This will become the norm for countries with large economies that have global relevance, DeDollarization now makes more sense, because each country want to have economic autonomy with respect to its own monetary policy.
The consequences policies of the Biden admin will cause the standard of living in the US to decline enormously. Unless these harmful policies and the current US corrupt political environment is changed, there is going to be a decline in the US standard of living never experienced.
Big Black Cloud - Felicity Urquhart