Short Takes

Consultants Croon for Charity

Public Enterprise

Several clusters of musically talented Deloitte consultants have released a CD for your listening pleasure as well as to support a good cause. The CD, titled Riverside, contains covers of popular classic rock tracks, and will help raise money for the Twin Towers Orphan Fund. Six bands — The Project, Charlotte Hodgson, The Partners, and Stephen Christie from the United Kingdom; the Iberian Orchestra from Portugal; and DC Nine from Atlanta — worked on the CD.

The Orphan Fund provides long-term educational and housing assistance, as well as mental and physical healthcare benefits, for children who have lost a parent — in many cases the breadwinner parent — in the September terrorist attacks.

Deloitte chose the group because it is a 100-percent volunteer-supported activity and all of the donations go directly to the 3,000 children currently registered. No donations to the fund are spent on administration, management, or marketing. The firm has agreed to cover all of the recording, production, royalty, and marketing expenses of the CD.

Riverside costs $3 and can be purchased at www.dc.com.

Sector Focus

Manufacturers and Distributors at Odds Over e-Business

Manufacturers are still unsure if the Internet is a superior alternative to distributors as a way to provide product information to customers, according to findings of a recent report compiled by the Distribution Research and Education Foundation of the Washington, DC-based National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.

Market Trends

Here's another case of good news/bad news for the e-business sector. The good news comes from a study revealing that companies expect to increase overall e-business spending by seven percent over the next 12 months. The bad news is that this number is down from 11 percent a few months ago.

The quarterly study, conducted by AMR Research, revealed that executives are focused on increasing efficiencies by streamlining their internal processes and reducing overhead through appropriate technology. AMR interviewed 100 companies with 1,000 or more employees in the fourth quarter of 2001.

Some of the highlights of the study:

• 41 percent of companies plan to increase their budget on sales and customer management initiatives, down from 48 percent measured in Q2.

• 31 percent of companies plan to increase their budget spending on supplier management initiatives, declining from 37 percent in Q2.

• Internal e-business initiatives, including employee self-service, electronic finance, knowledge portals, and risk management, has become more active, with 33 percent of companies planning to increase spending from Q2's 25 percent.

Workplace

With pink slips being handed out as blindly as stock options once were, companies are becoming more and more concerned about its trickle-down effect on their long-term business health.

According to a survey of 500 small to large companies by InsightExpress, 59 percent of employers who have just gone through a downsizing are worried that their remaining employees will begin looking for work elsewhere. And 62 percent fear that the reductions in staff would decrease customer loyalty and encourage business customers to seek other suppliers.

In response to the reductions, 42 percent of all companies indicated that they plan to reallocate company resources, asking employees to be more efficient, contribute more, and work longer hours.

Sidebar: Organizational Tactics/Seven Common Planning Mistakes

Preparing for a project? According to Leadership Strategies, Inc., of Atlanta, the plan will go a lot smoother if you avoid seven common mistakes:

1. Confusing vision and mission, and therefore not having a defined view of success.

2. Having broad goals but no measurable outcomes; therefore, the targets are unclear.

3. Measuring activity instead of results.

4. Focusing on strategies that don't

address key barriers or critical factors for success.

5. Failing to prioritize strategies, and therefore trying to undertake too much.

6. Failing to develop detailed action plans for priority strategies.

7. Creating a great plan, but not working the plan because a monitoring process was not put in place.