CFO’s are looking for efficiencies through technology

Great article today in the Wall Street Journal talking about how CFO’s are becoming more aggressive about spending on technology to promote efficiency in their organizations. According to Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester Research, “CFOs are now being confronted with a handful of technologies that promise to upend the way business has long been done. These technologies in many cases have very positive returns.” I would add to this that many of the best “technologies” available today are actually “technology enabled services” that not only leverage technology to drive efficiency but com as part of a service that makes them virtually turnkey to implement. Many of these require zero IT investment by the company and require no incremental human resources be applied to the effort in order to capture the gains promised.

We certainly put B-Stock Solutions in this category. The ROI our customers are realizing with our solution is off the charts. Whether it is Walmart selling returns in a liquidation tv auction, Whirlpool selling scratch and dent inventory, or Macy’s selling excess handbags and clothing, we continue to help them drive higher pricing and more volume through the secondary channel. These increased recovery rates drop to the bottom line at a rate of better than 90%, so the impact on earnings can be substantial. In addition, it is helping companies empty warehouses of depreciating inventory saving them on warehousing expense, depreciation and the cost of the capital tied up in it. Lastly, we are assuming more and more of the operational management to deliver the service which frees up our clients to focus on higher priorities.

Articles like this one reinforce our belief that it is only a matter of time before other retail and manufacturing leaders recognize that paying just a little closer attention to the technology and services that are available today, even in the less prominent areas of their business (like liquidation) can have a major impact on their efficiency now and into the future. They will also realize that companies like B-Stock that provide solutions to address these less prominent areas recognize that the auctions liquidation solutions have to be turnkey to implement given their lower priority. We’ve mastered this here at B-Stock and our customers love us for it when doing their liquidation sites comparison.