Thesis work paper Case Study Summation

It can be seen from the cases above that all followed a similar order and pattern.
First the board of directors sought a new Chief Executive Officer to run the company. This was followed by the new CEO finding out what was wrong with the company in general terms and where.
It should be noted that after this had been done the turnaround manager then recruited the turnaround management team. This makes sense, as by finding out the particular problems in the firm, one can then hire the appropriate person to solve that particular issue. In nearly all cases both the CEO and CFO were removed.
Secondly once the turnaround management team has been assigned, large-scale management changes seem to be in the order of at least 10% regardless of the number of staff laid off.
Thirdly, not all layoffs were done at once. This may reflect the international business element of some of the companies or the perhaps the logical and financial difficulties or remove large numbers of staff at the same time.
Fourthly all the software turnarounds focused on financial discipline, budgeting and general human resource and performance management restructuring prior to removing people.
Fifthly all development projects were investigated and late projects terminated, while promising one’s were given more resources, money and made the central focus of the business through cultural and strategy realignment.
Again it is noted, that the projects that did succeed were all based around the firm particular core competencies.
Finally all the turnarounds sought new product categories to not only enhance revenues, but in many cases to also spread revenue risk.

Thesis work paper Improving Cash Flow in Software Companies

The basic premise is to produce more versions with fewer features more quickly (Davidson, 2001), with a more targeted customer base and at a lower cost. In short using continuous incremental improvements to improve cash flow and thereby increasing profitability.
This follows exactly on from Dr W Edwards Dening’s “Process of Continuous Improvement” (Walton, 1996). The increase in the number of software releases is similar to a ‘virtual subscription’, with customers updating their software more frequently.
One example of this has been in the software gaming industry. Epic Games Unreal Franchise has moved from releasing a brand new gaming version every 5 years, to a new version minor version every year. For example the original Unreal Tournament was released in 1999, and the next version was released in 2003. Although the product met with commercial success, customers were also faced with increasing choice from new market entrants. Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and former “Eastern Block” countries have all entered the software gaming industry and prices have begun to drop as competitors fight for customer’s share of wallet. Responding to the change in competition, Epic released the minor upgrade version of Unreal Tournament 2004, which met with huge success. Davidson (Davidson, 2001) and Shapiro (Shapiro et al., 2000) both observe that releasing software more often and at lower prices not only improves cash flow, but also generates significantly better customer feedback.