Turnaround Management

Understanding Turnaround

Turnaround management is a process dedicated to corporate renewal. It uses analysis and planning to save troubled companies and returns them to solvency, and to identify the reasons for failing performance in the market, and rectify them.

Turnaround management involves:-

– management review

– root failure causes analysis

– SWOT analysis

to determine why the company is failing.

Once analysis is completed, a long term strategic plan and restructuring plan are created.

Turnaround Managers are also called Turnaround Practitioners facilitates the change.

– stay as long as it takes to achieve the turnaroundTurnaround management does not only apply to distressed companies, it in fact can help in any situation where direction, strategy or a general change of the ways of working needs to be implemented

The evaluation and assessment stage

The acute needs stage

The restructuring stage

The stabilization stage

The revitalization stage

Stages in restructuring of an organization:

The first stage is delineated as onset of decline.

Factors that cause this circumstance are:-

– new innovations by competitors

– downturn in demand, which leads to a loss of market share and revenue.

But also stable companies may find themselves in this stage, because of

– maladministration

– the production of goods that are not interesting for customers.

The reposition situation is the point in the process, where the minimally accepted performance is long-lasting below its limits.

In empirical studies a performance of turnaround is measured through financial success indicators.

These measures ignore other performance indicators such as impact on environment, welfare of staff, and corporate social responsibility.

The organizational leaders need to decide, if a strategy change should happen or the current strategy be kept, which could lead on the other hand to a company takeover or an insolvency.

Search for new strategies

Question that need to be asked here are, if the search for a reposition strategy should be participative and decentralized or secretive and centralized or intuitive and incremental or analytic and rational.

Here, the selection must be made quickly, since a second turnaround may not be possible after a new or existing poor performance.

This means, that a compressed strategy process is necessary and therefore an extensive participation and analysis may be precluded.

Selection of a new strategy

Strategy typically concentrates on this one of the reposition process.

Commercial success is again possible after a failing of the company. But different risk-averse groups, like suppliers, customers or staff may be against a change or are sceptical about the implementation of the strategy. These circumstances could result in a blockade of the realization.

The implication of the new strategy ensues in the following sixth stage. It is a necessary determinant of organizational success and has to be a fundamental element of a valid turnaround model.

The outcomes of the turnaround strategies can result in three different ways:- Terminal decline:- This is possible for situations, where a bad

strategy was chosen or a good strategy might have been implemented poorly.

Continued failure:- Here is the restructuring plan failed, but dominant members within the company and the environment still believe that a repositioning is possible. If that’s the case, they need to restart at stage four and look for a new strategy.

Does an outcome of the new strategy turns out to be good, a turnaround is called successful. This is achieved, when its appropriate benchmark reaches the level of commercial success

Techniques

RetrenchmentThe Retrenchment strategy of the turnaround management describes wide-ranging short-term actions, to reduce financial losses, to stabilize the company and to work against the problems, that caused the poor performance. To reduce scope and the size of a business through Shrinking Selective Strategy.

– Selling assets

– Abandoning difficult markets

– Stopping unprofitable production lines

– Downsizing

– Outsourcing.

RepositioningThe repositioning strategy, also known as "entrepreneurial strategy", attempts to generate revenue with new innovations and change in product portfolio and market position.

This includes development of new products, entering new markets, exploring alternative sources of revenue and modifying the image or the mission of a company

ReplacementReplacement is a strategy, where top managers or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are replaced by new ones.

This turnaround strategy is used, because it is theorized that new managers bring recovery and a strategic change, as a result of their different experience and backgrounds from their previous work

RenewalWith a Renewal a company pursues long-term actions, which are supposed to end in a successful managerial performance.

The first step here is to analyze the existing structures within the organization. This examination may end with a closure of some divisions, a development of new markets/ projects or an expansion in other business areas.

Hurdles or Challenges

– Design: What type of restructuring is appropriate for dealing with the specific challenge, problem, or opportunity that the company faces?

– Execution: How should the restructuring process be managed and the many barriers to restructuring overcome so that as much value is created as possible?

– Marketing: How should the restructuring be explained and portrayed to investors so that value created inside the company is fully credited to its stock price?