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financial documents?
- Thread starter ashiol
- Start date
- Joined
- May 7, 2010
- Messages
- 24,399
- Reaction score
- 10,426
- Location
- Upstate SC
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Once a year, a trade publication does a survey of companies within my industry. Thats the only edition that I usually read cover to cover, because it provides me insight into trends in the industry, which I may or may not otherwise recognize.
By looking at these numbers, I can compare the direction that I am moving in, to the direction of the overall industry. During the past few years, my industry has been migrating to more digital printing and less offset printing. Until recently, I have pretty much been ignoring the digital printing part of my industry, and moving in other directions to replace my decline in sales of offset printing. However, I have been monitoring digital closely, and just recently decided to take the plunge into it. The reason why I didn't do it before, is because I didn't have customers specifically requesting digital. The reason that I went ahead and invested in more digital equipment was because by studying the movement of my competitors, I realized that I may be missing out on the fastest growing segment of my industry. In the matter of less than a month, I have increase my sales, by more than I expected, by installing more digital equipment, and with only a scant tad of advertising.
But it is also interesting to be able to compare my numbers, with that of other similar companies. things like cost of goods, sales increases/decreases, labor costs, advertising expenditures, etc. by making those comparisons, I can find inefficiencies in my own company, and also exploit any voids or vacuums in my local market. Knowledge is power these days.
Somehow I get the feeling that I just answered a discussion question in the online class that you are taking.