Academician José Antonio Segarra publishes in the Harvard Deusto Business Review the report “Crisis y reflotamiento en la pyme: criterios de actuación”
Dr. José Antonio Segarra
José Antonio Segarra, Marketing professor of the IESE business school and full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), has published in the special monograph that the Harvard Deusto Business Review has dedicated to SMEs (number 276) the report “Crisis y reflotamiento en la pyme: criterios de actuación” (Crisis and refloating in the SME: criteria of action), where he offers some guidelines to the companies to adapt to the continuous change of economic, social and political scenario in which they have been immersed as an actor more of their context and, in the end, to overcome a crisis that if not brought back in time can lead to its extinction.
For Segarra, the first postulate of the company is its competitiveness. “Competencies are only developed to compete when competing, but competitiveness is a relative phenomenon, specific and in constant evolution, and it has to be constantly measured in each sub-sector. The decisive factor is always the differential in relation to our direct competitors”, he warns. And the key to compete is in a responsible, trained, informed and aware management of the situation of your business, your sector and the economy in general. “Directing with criteria implies surfing on the crest of the cycle and, above all, survive in the pit, and this means managing always anticipating and with an eye on the next phase of the cycle. Anticipate and govern, not be governed by circumstances”, he says.
The academician offers two general principles of good governance of any SME based on common sense: “The first is to handle rigorous and realistic numbers, avoiding accounts with “creative” trompe l’oeil accounting and, at the same time, checking permanently and with rigour the emergence of risks and holes likely to appear below the waterline. And second, making business daring and compatible with financial prudence”.
Finally, Segarra warns about taking the appropriate measures in time to overcome a crisis, given that today 90% of the companies that come to the creditor contest end up in liquidation. “Companies in crisis require a radical rethinking of their business and costs, praxis recommends acting very quickly in the containment of losses and destruction of cash, obsessed with the recovery of the margin and the generation of liquidity. It is necessary to start by ordering and eliminating all those activities where box or margin is destroyed, for which the first thing is to redefine the new business scope and focus on the following decalogue of areas of improvement”, he advises.
