We're about half way through the year and the global economy has been taking a big hit. We hear this every day, but when I hear it I often think how it really affects people on the ground, and selfishly, what it really means in relation to me and my 25 person team. I imagine most of you wonder about the direct impact to your business and your pocket as well. Since Hodgson likes to see ourselves as partners to our clients, I thought you might be interested in the state of our business and how this global meltdown is affecting our very small universe.
Fortunately, we are moving through the year pretty much as planned. We are about 10% off our revenue goal (which I believe we will make up in the next 6 months) and about 5% off our sales goal.
Based on the business coming in and the projects being delivered, I have been blessed with not having to make any hard decisions in cutting employees or plans. In fact, in this time of uncertainty I have stuck to my guns and boldly pushed through increased sales and marketing initiatives and resources. This has allowed Garry Sittig (Director of Sales) to really attack the new business aspect of our organization significantly, with, I'm pleased to report, great success.
The one area of concern so far has been cash flow (as it is with any business) and I would attribute that to the imploding global markets impacting our clients, but, I again looked to our CFO Cate Rooney to manage that and to no surprise, she did. While it is always a concern, it was, and continues to be, at the "let's keep an eye on that" defcon.
The bottom line is that we are dealing with the recession, crisis, downturn, whatever you want to call it by investing in our business development and running our operation a little smarter. I anticipate we will grow organically this year, we will refine our processes both on a business end, and also on the delivery of our projects, and we will continue to grow and mature.
In short, the state of our small union is as we thought it would be back in November 2008 when we did 2009 planning - pretty darn good!