Turnaround Strategy

Definition: The Turnaround Strategy is a retrenchment strategy followed by an organization when it feels that the decision made earlier is wrong and needs to be undone before it damages the profitability of the company.

Simply, turnaround strategy is backing out or retreating from the decision wrongly made earlier and transforming from a loss making company to a profit making company.

Now the question arises, when the firm should adopt the turnaround strategy? Following are certain indicators which make it mandatory for a firm to adopt this strategy for its survival. These are:

• Continuous losses
• Poor management
• Wrong corporate strategies
• Persistent negative cash flows
• High employee attrition rate
• Poor quality of functional management
• Declining market share
• Uncompetitive products and services

Also, the need for a turnaround strategy arises because of the changes in the external environment Viz, change in the government policies, saturated demand for the product, a threat from the substitute products, changes in the tastes and preferences of the customers, etc.

Example: Dell is the best example of a turnaround strategy. In 2006. Dell announced the cost-cutting measures and to do so; it started selling its products directly, but unfortunately, it suffered huge losses. Then in 2007, Dell withdrew its direct selling strategy and started selling its computers through the retail outlets and today it is the second largest computer retailer in the world.