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Customers taking backseat to stockholders
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<blockquote data-quote="brownIEman" data-source="post: 313199" data-attributes="member: 14596"><p>JustTired,</p><p></p><p>nail, head, bang. One of UPS great strengths has always been our incredible ability to control costs. It has amazed me over the years the times we have been looking at a potentially loosing quarter, so we start tightening the belt, and manage to control costs enough to not only avoid a loss but make a great profit. The problem is, slowly over the last several years, that strategy has seemed to be the only answer we have to the increasing competitive market we are in. We have more or less continually lost market share for the last 12-15 years, but have managed to continue making large profits due to the fact that the market as a whole has grown so much and our ability to "trim the fat" as it were.</p><p></p><p>Right now however, we are facing 2 new and very dangerous realities, IMHO. 1, the economy is slowing so we can no longer rely on the growth of the market to increase our volume, we must not only stop loosing market share, but gain some of it back. 2, we have relied on "trimming the fat" for so long, that we have become blinded to the fact that in many cases we are not trimming fat, we are in fact trimming muscle (that being, the ability to service the customer and service him well).</p><p></p><p>It does not take a genius to see that reality number 2 is going to make reality number 1 damn near impossible to address. If we cannot service our customers well, we will not be able to win new ones.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="brownIEman, post: 313199, member: 14596"] JustTired, nail, head, bang. One of UPS great strengths has always been our incredible ability to control costs. It has amazed me over the years the times we have been looking at a potentially loosing quarter, so we start tightening the belt, and manage to control costs enough to not only avoid a loss but make a great profit. The problem is, slowly over the last several years, that strategy has seemed to be the only answer we have to the increasing competitive market we are in. We have more or less continually lost market share for the last 12-15 years, but have managed to continue making large profits due to the fact that the market as a whole has grown so much and our ability to "trim the fat" as it were. Right now however, we are facing 2 new and very dangerous realities, IMHO. 1, the economy is slowing so we can no longer rely on the growth of the market to increase our volume, we must not only stop loosing market share, but gain some of it back. 2, we have relied on "trimming the fat" for so long, that we have become blinded to the fact that in many cases we are not trimming fat, we are in fact trimming muscle (that being, the ability to service the customer and service him well). It does not take a genius to see that reality number 2 is going to make reality number 1 damn near impossible to address. If we cannot service our customers well, we will not be able to win new ones. [/QUOTE]
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