In its fourth-quarter of 2020, the sports powerhouse revealed that it has launched the Consumer Direct Acceleration phase of its Consumer Direct Offense alignment, which was unveiled back in 2017.

Nike plans to increase investments in e-commerce and technology as part of the strategy, as well as simplify its “consumer construct” of men’s, women’s, and children’s divisions. It also plans to establish up to 200 additional smaller-format, digitally equipped “monobrand” stores across North America and the countries of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Nike laid off an undisclosed number of staff as a result of the relocation. The layoffs, according to Nike, are not connected to cost savings, but rather to a reorganization of resources.

Due to the Pandemic, Nike, like other businesses, had to close the majority of its stores throughout the world. However, Nike’s success during the pandemic, when online sales soared, convinced many that the company had the ability to thrive in the long run, in a world increasingly defined by e-commerce and digital brand relationships. Because of the closures of its physical shops, Nike has shifted its focus to its digital business – the brand then saw double-digit growth in all geographies.

Consumer Direct Acceleration became a great success. In the mere year since June 2020, Nike’s shares grew by 66%, which is roughly equivalent to the already successful period from 2017 to 2020, when shares grew by similar amounts.

In the midst of a pandemic, how did Nike’s stock price reach an all-time high? The success of the American sportswear behemoth is based on a ground-breaking direct-to-consumer approach centered on content, community, and personalization, and designed for a post-internet future where brand relationships are everything.

Nike isn’t the only company that has realized the advantages of selling directly to customers. Under Armour is also intending to close thousands of wholesale doors, while Adidas expects DTC to account for half of its sales by 2025. Retailers in other industries have also realized the need to refocus on direct-to-consumer sales. But if we take into the account the timing of these new measures, it’s become obvious that most of these companies were inspired by Nike’s success.

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Is CRM required for small businesses, or is it only required for large corporations?

Small businesses have certain distinct characteristics.

For example, a single customer’s departure is more sensitive than in large corporations.

Unorganized job duties lead to repetitious tasks or a lack of understanding of who is responsible for what. In such circumstances, a business owner may believe that his or her organization is not ready for digital transformation.

CRM, on the other hand, is capable of resolving all of these issues. Particularly in this day and age, when remote employment has become the standard. The indispensability of some personnel is a perfect illustration of a problem that a small corporation encounters. You can only have one accountant, marketer, and so on. What if a worker is obliged to work from home? He or she can stay in the workflow with the support of an electronic system.

CRM can thus assist in human resource planning. The system aids in the distribution of duties based on employment or competencies, as well as the monitoring of each employee’s workload and the determination of KPIs.

Also, the software is useful in the field of information security. Each employee uses their own username and password to log in. Employees’ actions can be tracked, and access to sensitive information, such as a client database, can be restricted.

Such a system helps to clearly assign tasks. The work plan will be visible to your management, and they will receive messages. This will help to avoid mistakes in a small business when a manager has to supervise logistics, bookkeeping, and client work. 

This is a good capacity to parallelize processes and have all client information readily available. Personal information, documents, purchase status, and more will be stored in your client database.

Electronic document management will aid in the elimination of interminable folders that defy all systems. We are not calling to persuade you to purchase an expensive CRM system right away. It’s possible that its features will be excessive for you. Make an attempt to convert some of the work to a free version. Perhaps you will soon discover that your investment has paid off in full.

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In fact, the salads and the breakfast are a nice real-life example of why and how your strategy should definitely be flexible and have some leeway in execution.

Fast-food breakfast seemed a crazy idea in the 1970s. Yet with the introduction of the Egg McMuffin in 1972 and the full breakfast menu a bit later McDonald’s managed to grab up to a quarter of the US breakfast market by 1987¹. The 2015 all-day breakfast introduction was yet another step to appeal to the customers requiring more menu options on a 24/7 basis.

The salads in McDonald’s had a similar track record: customer demand for a wider variety of healthier food led to the salads roll-out in the mid-1980s. The company responded to the acute rise in health concerns among the public in the early 2000s by pushing on more salads and a full-scale marketing campaign for healthier food in 2003. This move helped to significantly improve the McDonald’s image among the active lifestyle customers and quickly get back to profitability and growing market share in the post-Super Size Me world.

So why back down now on the strategies that were so successful? Why cancel the ever-broadening menu approach that served well just recently? So here’s the tip: strategy is not about an immutable idea to be used forever. Watch your customers closely and react to their needs and demands even if it means breaking the established status quo.

Moreover, do not hesitate to use tactical respites while still pursuing your long-term goals. And I believe that this is the case with McDonald’s move today. It’s just a tactical decision to scale down a bit when your customers need most what you do best. During the 2020 pandemic scare and income reduction customers required uninterrupted service, fast delivery, and cheaper items which the company had the acumen and courage to respond to. Don’t worry: the salads and the all-day breakfast will return but a little later – just when the public will ask for them.

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Under Mr. Ghosn the strategy of the united company’s development was virtually all about sales. In the broad sense, it was based on the idea of another great car industry visionary – the late Sergio Marchionne. His target was to sell at least 2 mln. cars worldwide (see). While today this threshold seems a bit too easily overcome by many global brands, plenty of well-known manufacturers still struggle to reach it. And it was even more true in the early 2010s when some famous brands were on the verge (or even over it) of bankruptcy after the Global Financial Crisis.

So maintaining a high sales target has been a priority for almost a decade now. Yes, there have been accompanying goals like production platforms unification, geographic market segments targeting, and decreasing the number of distinct brands. But volume has remained the key, volume is the strategy in the modern car industry.

In this sense, the idea of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi breaking up has always seemed doubtful and counterproductive. This being the case Mitshubishi would have certainly gone way under the 2 mln. threshold, while the market power of both Renault and Nissan would have been almost halved. As so many companies know, it’s one situation to compete being the market leader and quite another lagging in the 5-6th place.

It appears that the year 2019, turbulent after Mr. Ghosn’s departure, was followed by an even more chaotic 2020. The major reason for this was the acute fall in demand after the global COVID-19 pandemic hit. It made the group’s management come to the understanding of what has always been quite patent: only keeping the alliance intact regardless of the smaller technical and organizational problems gives all the companies in it a brighter future. More standardization between the technological platforms and even more strict geographic market segments approved in May 2020 seems a natural way to go. Conversely, the recent rumors about a possible Mitsubishi separation (see) appear headed in the wrong strategic direction regardless of the short-term benefits for the management and some shareholders.

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COVID-19 greatly accelerated the adoption of cryprocurrencies in the case of Airbnb, as the company has been hit hard by pandemic. In the past, Airbnb said that there’re no plans to consider bitcoin as a mode of payment, but it might change in the future, according to the prospectus filled for IPO. The filling states that implementation of cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies would decide the future success of the company, so now it’s not a matter of “if”, but a matter of “when”. Especially since there would be successful example of actual Bitcoin usage very soon with PayPal.

E-payments giant Paypal has recently announced that their customers can buy, sell and hold Bitcoin and other virtual coins with the company’s online wallets. But it’s not just that: US customers will be able to use cryprocurrencies in actual shopping, starting in early 2021. CEO of Paypal is saying that “the service will encourage global use of virtual coins and prepare its network for new digital currencies that may be developed by central banks and corporations”. PayPal also plans to roll out these features to its mobile payment service app, Venmo, in select international markets. PayPay new allegiance to Bitcoin is confirmed by the fact that the company bought about 70% of all bitcoins that were mined in past month.

Airbnb and Paypal is just a small portion of companies that starting to use blockchain in their actual work. This, and insane rise of Bitcoin’s value in the latest year, confirm that blockchains are here to stay.

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Here’s more: Microsoft wasn’t even the first to try the similar scheme in gaming, actually: one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, Electronic Arts, began similar experiments back in 2015 which was quite successful, but it didn’t trigger revolution in the industry. However, Microsoft might be the only one who might truly succeed here, all thanks to multiple factors.

1. Microsoft has one of the best cloud capabilities in the world, so they already have the required infrastructure.
2. Microsoft recently has launched one of the only working streaming services, which allows every person (with stable Internet connection) with every device to try it, which puts it in similar position with Netflix and such.
3. Microsoft initiated mass purchase of video games studios, which would help to provide a constant stream of new content in the future, which is crucial for the streaming service.

The end goal of Microsoft is to deliver video games through streaming, console hardware or Windows PC to every home, to become the most accessible choice for gaming with the vast gaming library on demand. They have everything to achieve this goal, but there’s also a lot of things than can go wrong, from technical limitations of internet connection to simple lack of interest from consumers. The time would tell if the world would see Netflix-like service in completely different and much more complicated environment.

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