More About Phase I of Our Services

At Commercial Debt Solutions we break down our services into two major phases. Phase I applies to both full-service turnaround consulting, monthly coaching, and self-help / a la carte services. Phase I consists of an in-depth assessment and evaluation of the prospective client company. The purpose of this assessment is a quick diagnosis of the client company and its potential for turnaround. Amongst others, we need to find out how the company and its management had been performing in relation to the following:

• in terms of profitability and the management of the balance sheet;  
• as compared with its industry, in financial and operating terms;  
• as compared with sound business practices, in policy and operating terms;  
• in relation to existing opportunities.  

We need to analyze the above to find out if there are significant "productivity reserves" that can be tapped to make the company viable again. We have to make it as certain as we are able to, that the potential for turnaround of your company is real, and that the risks involved are manageable.

Commercial Debt Solutions would undertake such a diagnosis, charging only our minimal assessment fees for it, only if we feel there is a good prospect for contracting subsequent turnaround services.

This diagnosis will determine the strengths and weaknesses of the company (including its management and information systems) with a view to perform a turnaround. In particular, we need to determine the key risks in accomplishing the turnaround, and key potentials for turnaround – in relation to financial, marketing, production, and all other key operating factors.

We would spend 2 to 14 days on this work (depending on the size of the business and complexity of the situation), much of it on your premises, visiting your facilities, reviewing the work flow of key departments and the management process in your company. We would need to speak with your key executives and some of your other staff, including foremen and supervisors, some of your customers, some of your suppliers, and some of your lenders, your inside and outside accountants, and we would need to speak repeatedly with the owner or a representative of the board of directors.

The protocol for all these discussions will be agreed upon before our assessment visit. Also, before this visit, we will review the documentation you will send or turn over to us, including financial reports, both historical (up to 10 years) and recent interim reports. Of course, confidentiality is guaranteed. Upon completion of our assessment, we will present our findings and conclusions concerning the feasibility of turnaround. This will be done either at the end of our fact-finding visit, or if some additional research is required, on a return appointment shortly later in a form of an executive summary to workout plan, accompanied by a formal proposal.

If the company desires to engage the turnaround services of Commercial Debt Solutions on the basis of predominantly results-based fees, the assessment can be at minimal charge, but the company will pay all out-of-pocket expenses, i.e. travel, hotel, communication, and other related expenses (if applicable). If subsequent to our assessment, we accept to turn your company around on the basis of a predominantly results-based fee, we will work for you for several months before we could bill the first part of our fee (the non-results driven percentage agreed upon upfront is broken into and billed on monthly basis). After that we will work again for several months before we could bill the next part of our results-based fee. And so on, for a year or two, working the long hours that are necessary to achieve a turnaround. Compared to that investment, our investment in the assessment of Phase I is minor. Still, it will be 2 to 14 days of our work, plus travel time, and we would agree to perform this work with minimal charge only if we feel that the client's intentions are serious.

It is in our mutual interest that my assessment in Phase I be as factual and as correct as possible. Your cooperation, therefore, will be vital and a plan for our visit should be agreed upon beforehand.

At Commercial Debt Solutions, we do our very best to make the process of resolving your business’ debt issues as easy on you as possible, relieving you of the burden of dealing with creditors and collectors, and giving you the time and freedom to do what you do best – run your business.

A generalized process that every client / business owner has to go through is described below:

Stages 5 through 7 apply to clients that elect to follow self-help method and retain Commercial Debt Solutions to provide debt settlement services. If you choose to retain Commercial Debt Solutions for turnaround consulting, than processes described on More About Turnaround Services page and then in More About Phase II below will apply.

• Fill out a contact request form or call our toll-free number to set up an in-person evaluation.
• At the time of the assessment appointment, have all necessary paperwork ready and all decision makers present. Be prepared to sign all necessary documents (a list would be provided in our appointment confirmation letter), that will allow us to do our job expeditiously and efficiently.
• Based on the documents, information, and feedback received from you, our negotiation / turnaround specialists will come up with one or more options for your business turnaround, utilizing the 3 R's and our Business Workout Blueprint™ method, seven general steps of which are described below. This would be a good time to mention that debt restructuring / resolution is only one of the steps a business has to go through for a successful turnaround and bright future. But we are here to help, and we will guide you through all seven steps. This (these) turnaround option(s) will be presented for your review at the follow up appointment with your account executive, either by telephone or in-person (your choice).
• Upon being presented with workout solutions, pick the one you feel will work best for you, and sign any additional documents that might be required.
• If all you desire is assistance in re-negotiating your business' debts, then having signed appropriate documents, give us a few days to establish communication with you creditors – account executive will contact you as soon as we have ANY developments or if additional information is needed.
• If everything goes as planned and you follow our advice, the next time you will see your account executive is to sign an Accord and Satisfaction Agreement, when such agreement is reached.
• The total process might take anywhere between a few weeks and a few months, depending on numerous factors that are unique to your situation. In the mean time we invite and encourage you to take advantage of many free services that undoubtedly our account executive has recommended: business and marketing planning, SCORE referrals, advertising consultations, etc. – we are interested in your long-term success.
• Upon completion of the full scope of our services, our fees are due.
• Please continue to make payments and follow the terms of the newly-reached agreements to keep those agreements in-force, and if you run into ANY sort of trouble, please contact your account executive right the way.

The seven general steps to any successful business workout are as follows:

• Stabilizing the environment so you can make good decisions;
• Diagnosing why cash is tight, sales are off, and profits are down;
• Reorganizing your business around a profitable core;
• Preparing a reasonable workout plan your creditors will support;
• Negotiating the restructuring of your debts and obligations;
• Executing your workout plan with precision and consistency;
• Growing (or selling) your business when the turnaround is complete.

For a detailed description and explanation of all of the seven steps we follow to turn around any business
– large or small – please request a copy of our FREE report, Business Workout Blueprint  Owner's Roadmap to Long-Term Success, by clicking here.

More About Phase II – Turning Your Company Around
 

When the key causes of the company's problems are internal (in 80% of the cases, you will recall), rarely then is poor performance limited to one or two functional areas of the company. As a rule, it is a complacent or sleepy management attitude, and obsolete and inadequate management practices that prevail throughout a troubled company. If the problems are less widely spread, so much the better. In business units operated autonomously, there is a tendency to have a different corporate culture, and these units may not share management problems of the rest of the corporation. In any event, once the diagnosis is made, we have our work cut out for us.

As discussed on the page titled What Exactly Is A Corporate Turnaround, under turnaround priorities, in situations calling for a drastic turnaround, usually our first and foremost concern is to stop the hemorrhaging. What we do in this regard follows standard turnaround principles, which are detailed on this site. The essence of this part of our turnaround effort is to quickly bring the costs in line with revenues and to quickly bring the cash outflow in line with the inflow – by reducing expenses, postponing payments, increasing sales, divestment of assets, and accelerating collections. See more details under Corporate Surgery. At the same time, we act to stop the hemorrhaging of good will and morale by these and related actions, including through turnaround communications.

In many instances our experience allows us to see almost immediately that certain practices / activities in an enterprise are substandard compared to what's done in other companies. In other cases, we do research to find the guidance and the relevant benchmarks.

Better Chances for Turnarounds Today. Fortunately, because of the Internet, nowadays, business research typically takes only a fraction of time it used to take only 10 years ago. Because of that, today many troubled companies can put together their recovery plan much faster than in the past. This may mean weeks or even months of additional breathing room for a troubled company that needs to be reorganized, compared to a company in a similar situation years ago. This and the greater awareness of the advantages of Chapter 11 reorganization techniques, constitute some of the general improvements in the business environment in favor of turnarounds.

The factor that continues to limit the number of turnarounds is the availability of qualified management. There are only a few thousand professional turnaround managers in the US. That, of course, is by far not enough for the number of companies that are in trouble. In addition, because of the high demand for turnaround services, most turnaround professionals perform primarily the initial phases of crisis management and repositioning. Thereafter they move on to other assignments, typically leaving the company to complete most of the restructuring, and all or most of the re-engineering by itself. That is to say, typically they move on before the client attains sustained viability.

However, turnarounds depend on the quality of management probably more than any other business endeavor. Our own disciplined and comprehensive approach follows all the requirements outlined above, particularly on the pages devoted to the Type of Management Needed for a Turnaround and Attitudes that Turn Things Around. Below, we comment further on these requirements and give further examples from our experience.

More About Turnaround Priorities and Methods. Needless to say, not all parts of a company can be re-structured or re-engineered at the same time, or at the same speed. As your turnaround leader, our consultant will set detailed function-by-function priorities for restructuring and re-engineering your corporation. We will set these priorities following the general turnaround priorities listed on the What Exactly is Corporate Turnaround page, which are normative. These detailed functional priorities form part of the Turnaround Concept for the client corporation.

The client's and his industry's financial and operating data often point us directly to these functional priorities. The sequencing of these priorities can also make a big difference to the survival of the company and the speed with which it recovers its financial health, as the following case illustrates.

Case #4 – Optimal Sequence of Turnaround Actions. This case concerns a small corporation which succeeded in a turnaround with expert assistance of a turnaround consultant, but escaped all publicity of its troubles and to this day wishes those past troubles to remain confidential. Therefore, we have to disguise its identity, and can only say the corporation is in the service industry in Canada. The corporation's income statement combined with data from the other players in its industry told us that the expenses of this corporation's Activity A amounted to 8% of its total expenses and could be reduced by a half within roughly 3 months, while the expenses of its Activity B amounted to 50% of its total expenses and could likely be reduced by 20% within roughly 4 months. Because of limited management resources, we could improve only one of these activities at a time. We chose to reorganize Activity B first, even though it was already far more efficient. We simply calculated that this strategy promised to improve the profit picture 2.5 times more than the alternative strategy (savings of 0.2 x 50% = 10% of total expense, compared with 0.5 x 8% = 4%). The extra saving generated by this strategy was 6% of total monthly expenses during the time period until Activity A could also be improved (3 months). In that particular case this benefit amounted to over $300,000, and this money was used to finance other improvement projects.

We apply this type of reasoning to the ordering of all major priorities within the Turnaround Concept, including priorities of actions and projects listed in the Catalogue.

More about Attitudes and When to Eat Crow. The turnaround leader must be assertive, of course, but must also be able to put the interest of the company ahead of his/her ego. Actually, often at the beginning he/she has to eat crow because of real and perceived sins of his predecessors, particularly in dealings with bankers and other creditors.

It is surprising how often the management of troubled companies tell lenders that the sources of all company problems no longer exist and / or are mainly external. But this is not the way to regain lenders' confidence, when lenders previously cautioned management not to do certain things, or when lenders are aware that financial ratios of the company are well below the company's peers. Notably, professional lenders receive periodic reports on financial performance of various industries, and may know better than management of a troubled company, how that company stacks against its peers.

Case #5 – Crisis Management: Refinancing and Cost Reduction. Some years ago, after a span of several years we were re-called by a former client, an industrial, 300-employee company for whom Business Financial Negotiators consulted in 1980s. Actually, it was their new president (a man who inherited the shares and decided to run the company himself) who called us, having learned that we solved some problems for that company in the past. He said that since we already knew the company and its industry, perhaps we could have a quick look around and suggest improvements in production and other internal operations. We made an arrangement and we decided to start our assignment the next day. Before that, we asked for the financial statements to assist us in our work, and he told us we will get them later. We were not concerned, because we knew that the company was almost always profitable since its creation in the fifties, and there was no sign this would be a turnaround situation.

The next morning we began to observe the work on the shop floor. A few hours later, we were called to the president's office. He showed us a letter from the Bank, which he received that morning, requesting repayment of the loans, totaling over $6,500,000 within 30 days, and saying nothing more than that. The president asked for our suggestions. We said that the company will have to negotiate with the existing Bank and other lenders to refinance the loan. We added that we needed to prepare for this, and asked again for the financial statements. He was reluctant to provide them, but told us secretly that the company was in trouble.

We already knew this. That morning on the shop floor we noticed that the fluid (oil) used to cool the cutting tools on several lathes was dirty, and we asked the lead hand if our observation was right. He confirmed it and added that the foreman told them there was no money for new oil. The foreman confirmed this and we discussed ways to improve the filtration and recycling of this oil, compared to the cost of new oil. However, we realized that this was a bad sign – well beyond immediate shop floor problems. We informed the president of this, and suggested that our priority be changed to dealing with the banks. He gladly accepted, but was still reluctant to provide us with the financial statements, which we now urgently requested. He said these statements made the company look worse than it is in the reality. We did not want to debate the quality of the financial statements in a vacuum when we were receiving all the signals that this was an insolvency or pre-insolvency situation. Our answer was that we will either receive the financial statements that afternoon or will terminate the assignment. We were given the statements and were provided with all other information that we requested and which was available. Within a few days we had an outline of the whole situation, which was as follows. The company was profitable less than 3 years prior. Then rather suddenly, it experienced very large losses for those 3 years. This coincided with the periods of absence and illnesses of some former managers, including the late president. In those 3 years, revenues dropped significantly, while expenses stayed almost the same as before. In the present year, during some months the losses continued, in others not – we did not yet know why.

All or most of the equity was wiped out. The company appeared to have retained a certain net worth in production machinery and the building, but this was uncertain, because the recession in the industry at the time made the market values of these assets also very uncertain. Furthermore, a rapid divestment of these assets at reasonable prices was impossible. Most of the former senior managers who had good track record were gone. There was no replacement to speak of, including the new president, who did not know this technical industry, did not have a technical background and had limited management experience, except in sales. The company still had a good, though increasingly dissatisfied, clientele with whom the new president had some contact. The key big clients provided the company with long-term contracts, but practices on the shop floor had badly deteriorated, and efficiency was so low that on the average, prices did not cover variable costs.

Given time and a little cash we were certain that the efficiency could be improved. Actually, being familiar with the industry, we were able to quickly estimate financial benefits of some operating improvements that we thought could be made. Unfortunately, they did not add up to a picture of a break-even operation. In other words, the recovery was very uncertain. There was no Turnarounds Concept, as yet.

Our overall short term objectives were to reduce the hemorrhaging and to gain enough time to prepare the Turnaround Concept.

However, in these circumstances, we just did not see how another lender would want to replace the present Bank. We could also see why the existing bankers would want their loans to be repaid at that particular time. Lastly, we learned that the personal relationship between the Bank manager and the new president was very bad, and that the bad relationship started still while the late president was in office.

We saw our first task as obtaining an extension of the delay to repay the loans, and here we thought we could turn the bad relationship between the management and the Bank to the company's advantage. With a letter authorizing us to negotiate with the Bank, we phoned the Bank manager for an appointment. He immediately asked if we would be bringing the check for the $6,500,000 to the meeting. When we said no, he said that in that case he saw little point in meeting with us.

But by saying this he gave us an opening, because we then asked him directly, if he believed the company could make the payment now. Fortunately, his reply was honest, he said no. So we asked him if it wasn't a fact that he knew why we wanted to see him. He said yes, and added that he had very bad experience with that account (the client). He told us that his agreeing to meet with us was purely a courtesy. We told him that we knew he had a bad experience with the company lately, and that this was exactly what we wanted to talk to him about.

When we arrived at the Bank, the Bank manager had the bank's lawyer with him and made a point of that. This did not impress or concern us, because the lawyer could not squeeze blood out of a stone either. In fact, we saw the lawyer's presence as an opportunity to convince another representative of the Bank to give us a reprieve.

Although we called for the meeting, in actual fact the Bank manager quickly took over. He told us that he saw six other representatives of the company during the past 3 years, and that we were just wasting his time. We asked him to inform us in detail how he felt about the company, its management and the way the latter dealt with the Bank. Surely, we said, he was not afraid to tell us that. He opened up and the picture he painted was very ugly. However, we only opposed, and at that very briefly, a few obvious errors he made, namely when he jumped to totally unjustified conclusions. Most of the time, we simply listened. We also asked for certain explanations. When he seemed to end, we asked if he was finished. We had to ask this a few times, because he was only pausing, and he continued enumerating his grievances and worse. He talked about lack of control over expenses, false accounting, dishonesty, navel gazing, lack of competent management, broken promises, and so on – unfortunately, with plenty of examples backed by documents from the Bank's files. When he finally finished, we asked the banks' lawyer if he had anything to add. He did, and the picture they painted now got even worse. Their message, their words and their tone were very hostile, even ugly. However, it did not seem to me that they knew anything about the company's potential for recovery. On the other hand, our weakness (mentioned above), was that we were not sure either if it was realistic to expect a return to profitability. But the Bank did not know that, and we still had some time to figure it out.

The message we gave them at the time had surprised both the Bank manager and the bank's lawyer. For we told them, that we thought they probably were right about everything except dishonesty on the part of the company. We said that in fact, we knew they were right about many things and we named some of them. However in the process of eating this crow, we were also partly (though very slowly) disarming them, and of course, we mentioned some improvements that we thought could be made. We added that our work was just starting.

At the time of that meeting the company had 22 days left of the 30-day notice given by the Bank. We told our interlocutors that we did not think the company could refinance the loan within 22 days, and that an extension was needed in the mutual interest of the parties. The Bank manager icily said the Bank would have to see a real improvement before they would consider an extension and that we had 3 weeks to accomplish that, but that also meant that the door was not closed.

Eventually, working long hours on several fronts, we lowered productions costs, amongst others, by quality assurance, improving shop floor practices, reorganizing the purchasing and subletting a part of the premises. Step-by-step, we reduced costs and simultaneously, we obtained from the Bank several extensions of its notice to repay loans. To support our requests, we presented weekly financial statements, showing improvements and reports of efficiency improvements on certain jobs.

We used the time we gained to reorganize the company. Eventually, in that serious recession of early 1990s, we managed to refinance only about a half of that loan, because the Bank pressured us relentlessly and forced us to refinance before the company was fully turned around. However, what we did at the time was enough to get the Bank off our back, and thereby to save the company.

Our dealings with that Bank were part and parcel of the crisis management phase that is common in turnarounds. Also characteristic of effective crisis management in dealing with lenders was our factual acknowledgment to these bankers that promises made to them were broken, and that they had good reason to be upset. Beyond that factual acknowledgment we ate a great deal of crow on behalf of the company, using the opportunity to dissipate the bankers' frustrations and their anger, and to describe some measures that were being taken to prevent poor performance in the future.

In that particular case, as in some other such negotiations we conducted, things went close to the brink a few times. That particular Bank manager would never grant the extensions of the loans until the last day of his previous 30 day notice. Moreover, he made a habit of reminding us that 10 days were left until the deadline and that another reprieve was not certain. We felt this was abusive, but we kept our counsel on that. At the right time we used it to the company's advantage.

We acted as soon as the company's financial health had clearly improved. Our monthly financial statements showed that we had drastically reduced the losses and that we continued to reduce them. But the attitude of the Bank manager did not change. So we sent copies of those financial statements also to the Bank's vice-president. And we wrote them that in these circumstances the Bank's relentless pressure compelled us to point out that the Bank would collect less in case of bankruptcy than it would, if it allowed further the improvements to be realized. After our letter the head office put a good word on our behalf. The next extension was 90 days, and during that time we refinanced the loans. The new lender we found was small, but knew our industry well, and was willing to lend the company up to $3,000,000, provided we could refinance the balance of the old loan package ($3,500,000). To induce our old Bank to cooperate, we suggested to the new lender to make us an offer valid for only 10 days, and to state explicitly that it was conditional on our old Bank or another lender financing the balance of the loans. The lender agreed. In these circumstances the old Bank extended a $3,500,000 loan. Thereby, the whole $6,500,000 was refinanced.

Versatility and Innovation. In most cases, the manager taking responsibility for a turnaround must be very versatile. One must combine analytical skills, often associated with staff / advisory functions, with a drive to innovate in a very practical way that characterizes good operating executives. In most cases, to turn an ailing company into a money-maker, one must innovate in the full business sense of the word – innovate through equipment, through policies, procedures and contracts, innovate through new organizational structure, through new sales strategies, through new markets and new products, and innovate in every other viable way. One also must be willing to reverse policies that once made every sense.

Accordingly, when the company is in trouble, we question every significant policy: What are the objectives of this policy? Does this policy presently make sense? How can it be improved? Which part of it can be improved quickly? How? In the above case, the innovation consisted primarily in establishing proper machine shop practices, in areas such as such as tool management, machine set-ups, quality assurance, job scheduling, and in the related training of workers. If there are character traits that distinguish turnaround leaders from other people, then surely these ever-questioning and innovating, i.e. nonconformist and individualistic attitudes, rank high in this regard.

The Centralize – Decentralize Model. In a company which needs turnaround as a matter of its survival – typically a company that was mismanaged or non-managed (the latter actually is more common) – it is almost always necessary at first to centralize decision making in purchasing, budgeting, and certain other policy areas. But as new policies and new values behind these policies take hold in the company, and as new leaders emerge, it makes a lot of sense to delegate more, to empower the new leaders, in effect to decentralize.

Such flexibility of means and key policies, depending on circumstances, is also a trait necessary for effective turnaround work.

Combining the Old with the New. To locate "hidden productivity reserves", to turn a troubled business into a viable one, turnaround leaders often use a combination of old and new techniques and methods – both to analyze the situation and to re-engineer the business. We use such "old fashioned" but proven techniques as industrial engineering (notably plant layout analysis and material control), and cost-accounting on equal footing with "more modern" techniques such as customer satisfaction surveys, review of management process, promotional videos, and marketing through the Internet. In fact, very often these "hidden productivity reserves" become apparent only through a combination of various techniques.

Case #3 – Combining Various Techniques. The following case from our experience combined "walk around management", material control and a bit of financial analysis. The result was a startling finding of large and completely unnecessary loss of profit. Re-occurrence was prevented through changes in job descriptions of managers (re-engineering).

This is what happened. Many years ago, we were consulting in financial and policy matters to a large machining house, which at the time had around 250 employees and was profitable. We were not in a turnaround situation. In that company, every few days scrap dealers would pick up bins with shavings, cuttings, and other metal scrap from lathes, screw machines, and other metal working equipment. We learned this by "walk around management", asking questions about contents of bins we saw on the shop floor and in the shipping area. The materials included free machining brass, aluminum, and stainless steel, and were quite valuable, even as scrap. We compared the amounts the company received from scrap dealers with percentages of scrap-to-material revenue published by an industry association, and we were surprised to learn that this client's percentage was less than a third of industry average. We asked the chief engineer for explanation. He told us the discrepancy was due to a different nature of jobs run by this company as compared to typical jobs in the industry, and also suggested that the figure from industry association could be wrong. We realized that he was only guessing, and that large amounts were at stake. The overall issue was this: was the company receiving fair compensation for its scrap? It was well worth our time to investigate, because the potential was profit of several hundred thousands of dollars per year. At the core was the average percentage of material removed from feeding stock on big jobs. The chief engineer guessed that their shop removed on the average probably 50% – 65% of the feedstock material. We checked further. First, we confirmed with the industry association that their figures were unlikely to be a misprint. Their scrap-to-material percentages varied from year to year but within a range that was always far removed from this client's figures. There was no way to test the vice-president's hypothesis that the company's jobs were different. Nor was there a need to test it. Instead, with a technician, whom we borrowed from the chief engineer (who thought this was a waste of time), we reviewed the records of some of the big jobs the company was running, and which accounted for about a half of the company's revenue. Our calculations from production drawings showed that on these jobs, around 85% of material was removed on each good part. The total scrap on these jobs would be higher, because scrap from end pieces, and bad parts had to be added.

You probably had guessed it by now. Our investigation revealed that several scrap dealers, working with several employees of the company, were systematically stealing the company's scrap worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, year after year. In some years, a third of the profits were lost this way.

The chief engineer was innocent, as was the controller, as was the buyer, except that neither one set up any controls to prevent this large theft. The head shipper did not set up the controls either. He did not need them, he was part of the scam.

Upon some further analysis, we found that the implementation of relevant controls was not a part of anyone's job description. The controller had the title but not the responsibility for controlling. His main duties were to supervise bookkeeping, to produce interim and annual financial statements and some administrative work. If he had only put in place a cost accountant with a mandate to review costs and efficiencies... – but he did not. The chief engineer was not responsible for material control, as was apparent from his rather detailed job description. The VP manufacturing perhaps was responsible, but certainly not explicitly. And on top of these things, the owner-president often intervened in such matters, giving other managers the sense he took over responsibility for certain things on shop floor, whereas he did not feel that he did. He felt he was just helping out. He also did cost accounting himself, when he had time for it, which was not often.

As a result of our discovery, some controls were put in place, including some changes to job descriptions. Upon reflection, we realized that the root cause of the problem, which over the years cost the company millions of dollars in lost profit through the theft of valuable scrap, was an absence of proper management design, particularly, the absence of a real controlling function. The long duration of the scrap metal scam was further assisted by the absence of a benchmarking process in the company. Actually, until we did this, no one compared the company's performance with statistics from the industry association.

However, at the time, our assignment for this client was limited, and did not include the re-design of the whole management system. Several years later, in a more difficult market, this company required a drastic turnaround, but that is another story.