Profit Levers Podcast

This episode explains “How Midsize Companies Can Use Data to Compete with the Digital Giants.” The pandemic has hit midsize companies hard and rewarded Amazon and the other digital giants. Many midsize business leaders look at the growth of those giants and worry that there's no place for them to prosper. In fact, there's a large, wide-open playing field for incumbent firms to reposition. The key to your midsize company's survival in the post-pandemic period is to use the data you have readily available to identify your profit peaks and profit drains and strategically align your organization around your profit core to build dominance in your target market segments. This episode offers three steps that will provide a proven pathway to sustained, defensible profit growth in the post-pandemic period and throughout the era beyond. This episode is based on a recent article that John Wass and I wrote in Harvard Business Review. Here is a link to the article: https://hbr.org/webinar/2021/04/how-midsize-companies-can-compete-with-digital-giants Learn more by visiting our website HERE.

Big Data offers big opportunities, but it carries the very strong likelihood of creating really big disappointments. It doesn't have to be this way. The true promise of Big Data is to make your company better, not just to make parts of it more efficient. To accomplish this, you need one part technology to nine parts vision and great management. In this episode, I explain how to accomplish this. This episode is based on a recent article that Jonathan Byrnes and John Wass wrote in Chief Executive. Here is a link to the article: https://chiefexecutive.net/how-to-avoid-data-disappointment/

This episode explains “How to Focus on Your Most Profitable Customers”. Savvy managers are realizing that the new disruptors are not winning by doing old things better but instead, by doing new things that incumbent companies are simply not capable of doing. Every year, managers at companies large and small find it harder than ever to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service. But there is a way for companies to survive—and win—in this era of digital behemoths. The following is an article-length excerpt that Chief Executive ran from our new book, Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive. Here is a link to the article: https://chiefexecutive.net/todays-flood-of-change/

In this episode, Jonathan will explain “How to Win a Price War.” Any way you look at it, a price war is the ultimate in self-destructive, lose-lose behavior. But it is one of the most common of all management problems and concerns. In short, the real win strategy – for both customers and suppliers – is to turn the price war into a value war. The episode is based on a recent article that Jonathan and John Wass wrote for Chief Executive. Here is a link to the article: https://chiefexecutive.net/how-to-win-a-price-war/ For more info on Profile Isle, visit the website HERE.

In this episode, Jonathan will explain “How to Manage Your Most Important Risk.” The metrics that most companies use to manage their business processes, specifically including managing risk, are not adequate for today's business needs. These metrics are broad, aggregate measures like revenues, gross margins, and costs. They show whether a company is making money, but not where it is making money. Effective risk management requires metrics that show both. It is based on a recent article that Jonathan and John Wass wrote for Chief Executive. Here is a link to the article: https://chiefexecutive.net/how-to-manage-your-most-important-risk/

In this episode, Jonathan will explain “Precision Pricing When Inflation is Rising.” Precision pricing — which is highly targeted and enables managers to base prices on each product's true, current costs and each customer's true, current profitability — is custom-designed for today's unstable, inflationary environment. We explain four ways to implement precision pricing instead of traditional across-the-board price increases. The episode is based on a recent article that Jonathan and John Wass wrote for Harvard Business Review. Here is a link to the article: Read Now

In this episode, Jonathan will explain “How Enterprise Profit Management is Transforming Finance”. Traditional profit metrics' broad accounts, like revenues, gross margin, and operating cost tell managers whether they are profitable – while EPM's transaction-level profit metrics show the net profits of every nook and cranny of a company. This podcast explains how to use Enterprise Profit Management to create sustainable year-on-year profit increases of 10-30%. It is based on a recent article that Jonathan and John Wass wrote for StrategicCFO360. Here is a link to the article: Read Here  If you'd like more info on Profit Isle or would like to subscribe to email updates, please visit the Profit Isle website HERE.

In this episode Jonathan will explain “How Your CFO Can Manage Supply Chain Disruption.” Today's headlines feature the widespread effects of supply chain disruptions. Most companies focus on how to increase the robustness of their inbound supply chains, but the most important and urgent CFO task is securing and maximizing your company's long-term profitability by managing the effect on your customers. The podcast explains how finance chiefs have an historic opportunity to solve this pressing problem, and create long-lasting high-profit growth. It's based on a recent article that Jonathan and John Wass wrote for Chief Executive. Here's a link to the article:  https://chiefexecutive.net/how-your-cfo-can-manage-supply-chain-disruptions/ If you'd like more info on Profit Isle or would like to subscribe to email updates, please visit the Profit Isle website HERE.

Welcome to the second season of the Profit Isle podcast hosted by Jonathan Byrnes. Jonathan teaches at MIT, and is the founder and chairman of Profit Isle, a SaaS transaction-level profit-improvement company. This season, we're focusing on Enterprise Profit Management Insights. The biweekly episodes are based on articles that Jonathan has recently written for leading publications like Harvard Business Review, Chief Executive, and StrategicCFO360 – plus several that were created just for this podcast. If you find value in the show, please subscribe. If you'd like to contact Jonathan please write at jlbyrnes@mit.edu and if you want to find out more about Profit Isle, just visit www.profitisle.com.

If you look at the list of Fortune 100 companies of 50 years ago, you will see that most of them no longer exist, while if you look at today’s Fortune 100 list, it is striking how many of them simply did not exist 50 years ago. Why? Nearly all of them failed because they focused on winning their battles, but they lost their wars. How can you win your wars? That’s the subject of this podcast. Opening Music: Autumn by Kevin Graham Licensed via Artlist.io

Is your company trapped by its history? Surprisingly, most companies are shaped by their history much more than they are structured to respond to today or tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges. This problem is so strong and pervasive that no one even notices it. Yet it shapes virtually every aspect of a company’s structure and its managers’ behavior. Profit mapping enables you to penetrate through the tacit but ubiquitous iron grip of your company’s history to identify the really critical opportunities and risks that will determine your success or failure today and in the future. This is the secret to zero-based budgeting. This podcast sheds light on this enormously important management problem, and explains how profit mapping enables real zero-based budgeting that can allow managers to turn their companies’ history from a sea anchor into a powerful source of competitive advantage. Opening Music: Autumn by Kevin Graham Licensed via Artlist.io

This episode features a Forbes Magazine article about MIT’s Jonathan Byrnes: “Three Ways CFOs are Leveraging Data from Advanced Technologies”. The article explains how CFOs can use cloud-based systems to quickly see the profitability of every product sold to every customer every time in order to identify inefficiencies and improve the profitability of end-to-end processes. Profit Isle’s experience is that profitability climbs by 10-30% sustainably. The episode includes Jonathan’s seminal Harvard Business School Working Knowledge blog “Making the CFO Chief Profitability Officer.” Opening Music: Autumn by Kevin Graham Licensed via Artlist.io

This episode explains how to win a price war. Price wars are the terrorist events of every industry, and they seemingly create an unsolvable dilemma: match the competitor’s price and risk losing your profits, or ignore the competitor’s price and risk losing your revenues. Yet this seemingly unsolvable dilemma has an incredibly powerful solution – one which underscores one of the most important, but universally neglected principles of business. Opening Music: Autumn by Kevin Graham Licensed via Artlist.io

Big data is coming! What are the keys to success? Importantly, most of the seemingly obvious streams of payoff are revealed by careful analysis to be mirages at best, or quicksand at worst while others promise high returns. This podcast exposes the tips and pitfalls of managing in the coming Big Data world. Opening Music: Autumn by Kevin Graham Licensed via Artlist.io