During the latter stages of the 1980's I learned a lot watching a couple of people I knew in the MRP (manufacturing resource planning) game.
They had just been gazumped by JIT, or Just in Time inventory management and were also being overtaken by the rise in Enterprise Resource Planning. (The theoretical child of MRP, although most of us forget this now...)
Frantically, they tried to convince everyone that what they were doing was still valid, and that their particular brand of efficiency and optimization could still deliver what clients needed.
Too late and too bad.
They missed the turn, and instead of backing up to change course they just continued off into the sunset....
Are your services still valid today? Is the drop off in demand possibly greater than just "the effects of the GFC"? And if so, what are you going to do about it?
Industrial Engineering (time and motion), MRP, 360 degree analyses...the list goes on. All things that were great at the time, but they are no longer "the obvious choice" for improving whatever it is that needs to be improved today.
If your services are no longer "the obvious choice" then you every sales call has inbuilt friction. You can charge ahead regardless, blaming everything else for declining revenues, or you can choose to deliver what the market is looking for.
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