Insights in business news

[ggreig]

Work made the business news in the Scotsman on Friday, with the news that we've acquired our North American partner. Although we've known this internally for a little while, it's good to see it's been thought newsworthy in a national newspaper.

It is a big deal for the company. North America is our largest market, and growing, so the acquisition makes a lot of sense. I have been hoping - in my general ignorance of detailed business practicalities - that it would happen for some time, but didn't know whether it would be a practical business proposition for us. I guess it was!

Thanks to tobyaw for spotting it - our internal notification of such things has been a bit slow off the mark this time!

Comments

[myceliumme.livejournal.com]

I wish I understood this sort of thing. Sure the profit will come into Insights but won't the sellers set a price that takes into account the profits they are otherwise giving away? I guess that Insights can make some economies of scale and The issue for us was not having enough control over what was happening with it is obvious.

Anyhoo, congratulations to the backroom boys and girls (such as yourself) who have made this possible!

[ggreig]

I guess the difference on the financial front would be that the North American organisation which was previously taking a certain amount of the cash in order to make its own profit before passing the remainder on to the parent organisation, is now paying directly into the parent organisation without taking that percentage. Against that, we will have taken on their running costs, but as the American business is expected to grow the benefits should outstrip the costs.

The UK strategy mentioned in the article has noticeably paid off in terms of profitability, so it's a reasonable expectation that it will yield similar benefits in North America.

As for why North America would sell under those conditions, I don't know the reasons, but an obvious possibility would be that it would provide immediate capital rather than possible future income. That in itself might be motivation enough.

[myceliumme.livejournal.com]

As in "take the money that's guaranteed now and run". Yep, that - and avoidance of the work necessary to keep the thing going - would motivate me quite a lot!