Operating in Today's Economy & Why in the World

The conversation that did not take place a few years ago went something like this:

“We need to build new products and partnerships which allow us to add a lot more value to existing sites just in case the housing market implodes and there is a reverberation throughout the global economy in all aspects of business and employment.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is actually down 3% this year, masked by the 33% bounce since it hit the March lows. When people ask me how’s it going out there, my response goes something like this – I feel today about the general economy like I did in January. I feel that way not because the Dow Jones is at a similar price as it was at the beginning for the year but because of what I hear from partners and customers. It is a tough piece of bread, as my Dad said often, for so many companies and people.

Businesses remain pessimistic about being able to borrow money, more people are losing jobs, and employed consumers are trying to hold on to their income at a greater rate. I feel blessed to have a job, especially at Radiant given our situation.

Our company is very fortunate. We invested a lot of our profits over the last five years to help grow our business. We focused R&D and acquisition efforts mostly on expanding into new geographies, industry segments and product lines. I cannot honestly say that if we knew of the impending recession that we would have made those investments. But I am incredibly thankful we did. The products and businesses we invested in have proven to be somewhat recession-proof.

Customers more than I’ve ever seen are more focused on existing operations. Site expansion is no longer the top priority for many of our customers and prospects. Their eyes have turned towards optimizing existing site performance. Products like Quest, Orderman, and Aloha Command Center – just to name a few – are more relevant than ever for helping customers improve their existing store operations.

I am extremely confident in Radiant’s future. It is humbling that so many of the decisions we made years ago are proving to be crucial to our success today. As we look to the future, we continue to challenge ourselves to provide tools to more customers looking to improve their performance. We have touched various parts of the operation in the industries we serve, but there are more ways to help. That is the predominant question we are asking ourselves – how can we continue our success even when the given of site expansion no longer is?

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Why in the World

Radiant’s global leadership team gets together every six months. Those are two of my favorite times of year. It is a chance to catch up in person with Radiant’s top 80 people who each bring a unique perspective to our company. The agenda is always ambitious and the one two weeks ago was no exception.

Of the many items on the agenda, two stood out for me. We ended Day 1 with a session called Why in the World from Around the World. We started this thought process last year when the bleakness of the economy was at the forefront of so many minds. As I was tracking the decline in sales figures late last year, it occurred to me that our salespeople were selling more than I would have guessed. So, the question we began asking ourselves was, “Why in the world are customers in investing in POS right now?”

I spoke with customers and partners around the world about this question and was pleasantly surprised at the depth and diversity of responses. My conclusion was that we could do well in a bleak economy given the reason people are buying systems. I thought it would be good to get our top leaders engaged in this question, and, during the last two leadership team meetings, we shared our results with each other during the session called Why in the World from Around the World. It lasted 45 minutes with our leaders raising their hands telling all these amazing stories about why companies are pulling out systems of our competitors and replacing them with Radiant’s.

I cannot re-create the passion and energy that comes from watching our leaders from Salzburg to Singapore to Southern California share with one another these stories of how our system is helping businesses profitably serve consumers in a way they believe is better than any of our competitors. Several of the reasons why customers are investing money in systems include enabling customers to sell on the Internet in a seamless way with their store operations, reliability of our system during peak times, speed of service which drives revenue increase, shrink reduction that’s unparalleled, and the amazing service provided by our partners while at the same time our competitors are cutting levels of service. Several people told me how inspired they got from the session and the 16 stories I heard did the same for me.

Next week, I will share with you the second agenda item that stood out for me.