As we see many organizations in many industries “free fall”, it is important to not only identify paths to continuous progression of entities to provide value for customers and profit for stakeholders but also for other participants to learn from mistakes made by others and retrospect in their own agenda and management. Organizations like the ones that exist in the auto industry are classic examples of non diversification of their assets and core competencies. Organizations like AIG and other investment banks are the by-products of when management fails to identify and understand their own mistakes and recuperate. Newspaper industries seem to have lost the touch to innovate and adapt to growing trends and consumer needs whilst the real estate bubble shows us what could happen if we don’t keep our feet on the ground.

Software compaies on the other hand seem to have taken a small note out of  the energy industry players like Exxon. These days we see alot of these organizations playing a part in many niches as well as the standard protocols from cloud computing to browser implementations. Google and Microsoft seem to be leading the charge but IBM and Oracle are not too far away either.  But yet there are many players in the industry who seem to be “ok” with what they are currently doing because of the classic “core-competency” model and do not seem to be looking further ahead. The issue with the “core-competency” model is that, if you end up sleeping on your game for just a second, someone is going to come and gobble your market share or your brand name is just going to be eroded away. Microsoft took a long time to come up with Vista/Windows 7 and in the mean time people have moved to Leopard{if they can afford a Mac}, or Ubuntu or Fedora. Yahoo’s search pioneering capabilities seem to be fading away as players like ask.com and cuil.com are entering the largely Google dominated world.  Even the smaller companies seem to be either stuck between figuring out what their “consulting/services model” is {which is largely due to social networking capabilities these days anyways}, and whether they can come up with efficient solutions for current and prospective clients.

At eForce Global Inc, we seem to have done a great job on this visionary aspect and began the transition phase from a purely consulting firm to a solutions firm about 2-3 years ago and we are benefiting from the dividends during a recession. The products and services we provide range from “collateral consulting” to efficient and cost-effective business solutions. Our management seems to have cut the fat off and our technical experts seem to be doing two things at one time - “what is my business problem” and “how do i fix it fast and effectively”. The diversification I am talking about also refers to the domains that we have entered. We have spanned from system integrators to a certain number of products to identifying broader solutions that cover a particular domain such as the Financial Industry, Retail or the Media Industry. 

It is important that within a software company, people need to take some time out to see where they are headed, projected revenue vs cost-cuts and the tools and solutions they are providing to their clients. By being focused on one particular product or service and not understanding consumer trends - they could just become another Chrysler. At the same time it is also important that during such diversification people are held accountable for what they are preaching and doing  - and the numbers should show the way!