Maritime Business Strategies, LLC

Typical Consulting Services

OUTLINED BELOW ARE SOME OF THE TYPICAL QUESTIONS THAT CAN ONLY BE ANSWERED WITH THE HELP OF AN EXPERT SUCH AS TIM COLTON:

STRATEGIC PLANNING:

Where is your company headed?  Are you ready for some growth?  Where do you want to be five years from now?  Have you identified any new business opportunities?  Do you have all the resources you need for growth?

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT:

Are you fully utilizing all your assets?  Are your facilities being used efficiently?  Should you be in a different sector of the industry?  What would it take to get into a new line of business?  Do you need a strategic partner?  If so, who?  What would be the impact on EBITDA of this new business?  How do you choose among the alternatives that are available to you?

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS:

There's only so much growth that can be achieved with your existing assets: what do you do next?  What about buying a competitor?  Or somebody in a different market?  What criteria should you use for identifying targets?  Are you limited in the size of company you can pursue?  What can be leveraged with a little external help?

EVALUATIONS OF ASSETS:

Do you need to know the fair market value of a ship, a shipyard or some other maritime asset?  Any broker can tell you what the current market price for a ship is, but to whom do you turn when a long-term investor wants an income-approach valuation of a ship's worth?  Or when you need an independent valuation for insurance purposes?  Or when your tax position depends on your asset's projected residual value?

MARKET ANALYSIS:

How well do you know your markets?  Do you have databases of all the companies in each sector?  And of all your competitors?  Do you know in advance what your customers are planning or do you wait to hear about it from them?  Do you know in advance what your competitors are up to or do you wait to read about their latest coups in the press?

MARKETING SUPPORT:

How effective is your marketing?  Do the right people see your ads?  Does anyone see your ads?  Do your ads send the right message?  Do people keep your brochures or do they chuck them away?  How many trade shows do you go to?  Why?  Is your web site anything more than pretty pictures?  Do you take advantage of all the free advertising that's available?  Are you sure you're doing this right?

PROPOSAL MANAGEMENT:

How good are your proposals?  Do you get a lot of questions from the customer?  How do you really know that you're scoring points with the evaluators?  Are your proposals fully responsive to the RFP?  Are they written in clear, straightforward English?  Do they have a theme?  Do they make killer points in all the right places?

FACILITY DEVELOPMENT:

Are your facilities optimally developed?  Are you still using the technology of the 1950s?  How can you improve productivity and keep CapEx to a minimum?  Where is the balance between facility costs and labor costs that gives you the lowest cost per CGT?  Are your individual facility plans consistent with your company's strategic plan?

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND PROCEDURES:

Modern facilities and a productive workforce are of little value without effective organization, engineering, planning, production control, material control, asset management.  Is your company organized effectively?  Do you have all the management systems and procedures that you need?  Do your workers complain about poor engineering, lack of planning, late material, unreliable equipment?  Can you say with confidence that your projects are on budget and on schedule?  Can you predict cost at completion reliably?

TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR LEGAL SERVICES:

Sometimes you need legal help: it's inevitable.  But do your lawyers know the pointy end from the blunt end?  They may be hot stuff at their subject but what do they know about shipyards?  When you're paying a lawyer several hundred dollars an hour for his legal expertise, you don't need to be educating him in your business at the same time.  Technical support for legal services can save you tens of thousands.