Discussion: Economic Crisis & Nova's Solutions

In 2008, an economic recession was suggested by several important indicators of economic downturn. High oil prices, global inflation, increased unemployment, and signs of contemporaneous economic downturns in major economies of the world... Many companies have suffered a lot from the global economic crisis. What is your opinion on how to make ourselves survive?

So the topic for discussion today is: Economic Crisis & Nova's Solutions

Everyone please say your say. Air your opinions and share your ideas with us!

Caven: Let me be the first to say something - I can feel that this economic crisis has brought some influences to Nova. For instance, the number of "leads" we get are not as many as we used to get. Some clients require to cut down the size of their project teams, so more and more engineers become idle. From the angle of the company, the idle engineer cannot bring profit but the company still needs to pay them salary. So we know the cost on human resource is getting higher, and the pressure for the company is getting heavier.

Therefore, under such circumstances, I am of the opinion that we should be aware of the current condition we are confronting, think more about how to contribute more to the company especially when you are idle. For instance, you can try to promote the company website in order to attract more potential clients, etc. After the crisis, there will be an oasis in the desert. Are you ready for it?

Viki: I think, first and foremost, we should enrich the nova website to attract potential clients; second, better ourselves in terms of technical expertise; third, strengthen our verbal and written communication skills, of course in English; moreover, we can try to explore the possibilities of cooperation from some websites such as odesk, linkedin, etc.

Yiphone: Well... Doesn't the government say there is a 900 billion economic saving plan? We don't expect to get too much from the government's budget, but if we can have 0.01% of the total, it would be great! So I suppose we should try to attract the government's attention and make them our clients!

Zhao Yu: I don't think it is a good idea to get ourselves involved with the government. Do you have any relationships there? If not, this is not an option at all. As a matter of fact, we have successfully completed a lot of projects and accumulated extensive experience in software development. So why not develop our own product?

Shirley: The crisis can be a favorable turn. It is said that many big companies grew up when they encountered the crisis. Hopefully we will become one of the big companies. I believe the money comes from the "earning efforts" other than "saving efforts", so I am in favor of the following methods: website promotion, advertisement, self-improvement, and develop our own product.

Yiphone: Maybe we can make some changes to our sales and marketing strategies. For instance we can establish a mutual-beneficial partnership with old clients - if we enter into contract with the clients that they find and introduce to us, we will pay the commission fee from the total price of the projects to be carried out. I don't think it would be enough if we just do the SEO to promote our website and attract potential clients. We should be more active and ambitious to find the clients ourselves other than waiting still for the clients to find us by themselves. Basically there are only three things we need to do to fight against the economic crisis: first, scramble for more opportunities in this global market; second, strive for more professionalism; third, prepare the bread in advance to get over this cold winter.

Xu Qiang: I agree to both broadening the source of income and reducing expenditure. As the old Chinese proverb goes "broaden the ways to profit, and narrow down the business expenditures", this proverb must be summed up by the ancients based on what they have experienced. So we should follow the forefathers' instructions in order to build lasting success. You may have already noticed even the magnate ¨C Google ¨C started to retrench their expenses; we should be frugal too.

I am not saying we will reduce the employees' income, but just want to emphasize that at this point we should be prudent to use our money. Every coin should be spent on the right things. Every employee is in line with the company's long-term development strategy, making contribution to the company and improving himself in the mean time. I did some research today on how long the employees have been staying with the company. I found that almost all the employees have been working with Nova for over 6 months, some of them have improved themselves to a great extent, while some of them are still like new comers, still unable to be tightly involved in Nova family and really take in our corporate cultures.

Survival of the fittest. We will refine our team by selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior in order to provide better offshore software development service with our technical expertise.