Turnaround Services

Business Rescue Services

Are your sales growing while profit is only steady?

Do you have problems delivering quality products on time?

Are sales declining?

Do you lack a sound strategic plan?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can benefit from UAL's business turnaround services. Even if your business is not failing you can benefit from improved business operations. The case study below gives an actual example:

Case Study - A Software Company Turnaround

In late July of 2004 I was approached by the president and founder of A software company. The company, located in Ann Arbor, MI had been producing circuit simulation software since 1990. The circuit simulation software business had gone through a major consolidation between 1999 and 2002. Many of the smaller players had been acquired or simply gone out of business. The company had shrunk in size and was not paying a fair salary to the two remaining employees.

Historically, the company had a strong presence in the education market but Electronic Workbench, a company that went through rapid growth and made a series of acquisitions in the late 90s had come to dominate the market to the extent that The company was left with less than 15% of its revenues coming from educational sales. Electronic Workbench so thoroughly dominated the education market that in early 2005 their President was quoted as saying "We own the education market" in an interview.

The company had also experienced a slowdown in overseas sales as its network of overseas distributors shrank. Despite a weak dollar, The company had seen overseas sales erode in dollar volume and in the number of countries served by distributors.

The software had several strengths, including integration to CadSoft's EAGLE one of the few remaining independent PCB programs. The software also enjoyed a reputation for being easy to use.

During the fourth quarter of 2004 I did the following:

• Surveyed the overseas dealers to allow them to express concerns and help set direction
• Began an advertising campaign on Google and Overture
• Added to the companyÕs website
• Made sure a long delayed version was released by addressing a feature creep problem
• Negotiated price increase with largest overseas dealer
• Signed up new international dealers in key markets
• Began a PR Campaign
• Helped set a software development strategy
• Negotiated a source code licensing deal with major customer

During the first quarter of 2005

• Addressed additional quality programs
• Negotiated a deal with Zuken to include our software in promotional bundles for new users in the Americas.
• Added a software subscription program as an additional revenue stream.
• Signed up additional international dealers, including foreign Zuken dealers
• Began direct mail advertising.
• The company hired an additional programmer to begin adding new features identified the software development strategy as crucial.
• Began affiliate marketing with prototype board manufacturers.

Results:
First Quarter 2005 sales exceeded Q1 2004 by about 85%. Slaes through May have continued to exceed an 85% year over year increase. At the time of this writing (May 2005) 2 new products B2 Spice Professional CS and B2 Map CS that allow integration with Zuken's CADSTAR are in Beta testing.

Future Goals:
The company will take back a significant share of the education market. We will do so even if it means giving away product, because we want future electrical engineers to be familiar with our product line. Other goals include:

• Adding features to the product to make it more competitive. These include Verilog VHDL and C simulation, IBIS models, and improved graphing.
• Reducing losses to piracy.
• Expanding market share.