No. of Recommendations: 13
Every earnings call, every filing and every time a company has to disclose information it is an advantage for the individual investor to learn something knew.
Let me present a different, un-American view. I don´t know how it´s nowadays but during my active life writing IT books the German view on this was: Quarterly report is the reason why American companies are thinking and acting short-term. Because the boss has to polish the numbers before they are released end of the quarter.
And I personally made exactly that experience with my main publisher, Markt& Technik Verlag (M&T), who was the No.1 or 2 in the german-speaking IT book market (competing for No.1 with Data Becker, my former publisher).
Having started as a ´family´ business (3 founders, not related, nevertheless family among themselves and with their employees) which was thinking long-term, focussed on quality and reputation, all changed dramatically when Markt&Technik was bought by an American company.
Immediatedly prioritizing quarterly numbers, with tragic effects: I worked a lot with beta versions of Borland and Microsoft software (C compiler, MS Office etc.). Before Markt&Technik became American my manuscripts were thoroughly checked/reviewed by internal or external editors before the book was printed.
After Markt&Technik became American priority No.1 was about to bring my book to the shelves of the book stores sooner than Data Becker and Addison Wesley, the main competitors, as the book about the new version of MS Access or Excel which is the first one on those shelves for quite a while sells better than the later books of the competition (the employees then are already used to recommend that first book to inquiring customers).
I think it was with my `Excel 2000 Kompendium´ and my ´Access 2000 Kompendium´ when (around year 2000) the first time something happened which was absolutely unthinkable when Markt&Technik was still a German company: The books I wrote with the last beta version were printed!
Printed before the final versions of Excel/Access were released, the ones sold to the public --- and therefore before I had a chance to find out what may have changed compared to the beta versions.
All protesting did not help. I was told ´We print a small run first [That was already 5000 or 10000 books] and while we sell that you review your books with the final version and adapt it to the changes of the final versus the beta versions´.
Everybody knew there would be complaints from customers about ´errors/mistakes´in the books, not knowing that what I described was 100% correct for the last beta versions I used --- but not for the final versions MS released to the public. But those complaints were seen as an acceptable ´casualty of war for the 1st position in the book stores´, for making the end of quarter numbers look good.
Unthinkable as long as Markt&Technik was a German Company!
Caused by the American obsession with quarterly numbers.
Quality? Reputation? Long-term thinking?
Trademarks of a Germany before American companies took over.
What did Warren once say?
´It takes 30 years to build a reputation, but only 30min to destroy it´.
