Cooperation

Lithuanian business has developed and expanded quite successfully during the past decade. Many heads of companies have come to believe that only the growth of sales leads to business success, and ensures sufficient and uninterrupted income. Economist’s positions started vanishing gradually from the staff lists and the remaining accountants could only pay attention to economic analysis of companies’ activities as much as it was needed for banks (to grant loans). This lead to a widespread opinion that economic analysis does not really count toward the successful future of a company.

Global economic recession at the end of 2008 brought us not only problems but taught us some lessons. It turned out that companies which had incurred losses of various levels in the past, and consequently aimed to reshape their activities as well as thinking, weathered the recession best. When the crisis came into full swing in 2009 it was not as scary for those companies, because the business management changes that were implemented based on economic factors proved to work.

While understanding that cost cutting (unfortunately in Lithuania it means cutting of jobs) will always remain one of the major objectives of a company in order to adjust the objectives and abilities of the company to save and implement (partially or in full) specific functions. Toward these efforts we offer our cooperation. No one would argue the use of contracting out of business functions, also known as outsourcing. Economic consultations or economist’s service (as a part of function implementation) is not an exception in the modern business world.

It is the company who decides how much time (and attention) should be devoted for economic analysis. In some companies a permanent economist’s position makes no sense or there is no need to hire economist’s services for the entire year. Moreover these professionals and their qualifications, experience and competences differ and are unequal. Based on our experience we would suggest hiring the service at regular intervals throughout the fiscal year. The service package could be acquired when drafting annual (strategic) plans of the company for the first time. Two other packages are needed to carry out regular detailed economic analysis of economic-financial activities of the company. Usually it is enough to see if the company meets shareholders requirements (the minimum) or if it needs a more thorough economic evaluation (global reporting).

Other forms of cooperation are also available (or simply brief consultations). In any case, economist’s services are inevitable when assessing the operations of a company, making decisions on expansion, revenue, costs, expense management, optimization, current or future investments into the new products/services, likely business threats or risks, risk management or downsizing.