World over, capital markets have evolved in a manner, where the pursuit of strategy requires greater determination and courage. The single-minded pursuit of short term shareholder value, has the potential to enormously constrain strategy and long term value creation. Businesses and entities depend on strategy, the merits and strengths of which are only as good as the customers response to the proposition.

Besides, for several sectors and economies, a tough regulatory environment could mean looking for alternative paths for growth.

Every sector is cyclical in its economic behaviour. This behaviour has dependencies in response to the eco system it operates in. These may range from disruptions in the competitive space, the state of the economy, Regulatory changes, consumer behaviour, changing business models etc.

At times the cycle works brilliantly for a business to lift the outlook, at other times the contractions in the financials cause pressures for continuity.

The reasons for this may be several. But then, how and when does a business look for the signs to re-think ? The first signs usually lie in the business financials and customer analytics.

What do companies do after they hit success at any stage in businesses? Stay incremental, exit, or grow? It is a tough task for companies to managing being scalable and manage tactical challenges at the same time. It will require doing few or several things simultaneously to reach the next phase of growth.

It may be about your next phase of logical inorganic growth or exploring new markets and new business or revenue lines.

The challenges to scale or the process of scaling up depends on various factors like stage and size of business, sector it operates in, markets and geographies, capital requirements, management structure, talent requirement, legal aspects influencing the business and others.

The largest proportion of change in any sector has been the growing extant of services in the client-provider transaction.

In the ‘60’s Theodore Levitt predicted the impact the role, share and industrialization of services. He said that all businesses are about services, the proportion differs.

Businesses now behave differently in terms of how they align with the customer and the value they aim to provide. Globalization has played a critical role in the way sectors have been forced to innovate or rethink the value end of the business. With IOT (Internet of Things) and the Digital Universe, this change will be manifold.

There is an urgent need to understand, adopt and experiment in a more engaged manner to ‘innovate with services’.

Peter Drucker said in 1954: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”

A customer is the most valuable asset for a company. Arguably, more valuable than the company’s’ valuation, market cap or reserves. A company needs to evaluate segment or customers against its business strategy and profit pool.

For instance, if a mature B2B Business has its cost of acquisition to cause a slide in margins and cash reserves, then it’s time to think about the customer strategy. Or if a product business with a repurchase demand pattern, is suffering in a defined period, then it’s time to ask questions.

The critical purchase drivers need to be addressed to be sure it is uniquely positioned to deliver their products & services against these value drivers more effectively, consistently and profitably than competitors.

The strategy then needs to be orchestrated through every department related to the customer’s experience. The experience then needs to consistently reinforce the value. Only then can the business be sure of loyal and profitable customers.

In today’s competitive business environment the role of sales in an organization is lot more intrinsic and sophisticated.

Today it needs to respond to multiple business-critical inputs and challenges ranging from: strategic intelligence, agile markets, growing dependence on cross-functional processes, shifts in customer expectations, managing margins, an evolved supply chain and delivery modes - all have contributed to the complexity of this function.

Companies and Organizations are most times caught in a space where there is not enough attention to this critical function. Besides with the industry practices and digital reach, the role of sales or the operations may have been altered.

Global Growth, sustainable businesses and social development are driven by the deeper and qualitative spread of education, enhancing of skills and the elevation of competencies.

The acute shortage of educated and adequately skilled resources in growth centric sectors and geographies is today a challenge to growth and investments. The inversely proportioned job locations to manpower availability will lead to long term growth barriers. Appropriate collaborative solutions to develop and draw on global workforce availability is the need of the hour.

Closer home in India, a dearth of formalized vocational education, lack of vide variation quality, high school dropout rates, inadequate contemporized skill training capacity, negative perception towards skilling, lack of industry ready skills even in processional courses, low demand and readiness of certification for industry are some serious causes of poor skill availability of the country’s workforce.