28 July
Cost Control in a Stable Business
In cost control an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
All of us have learned that it is much harder to get rid of five extra pounds than it is not to put them on in the first place. In no other area is it as true as it is in cost control that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. An absolute necessity is to watch like a hawk to make sure that costs do not go up as fast as revenues; and, conversely, that they fall at least as fast as revenues if there is a recession and revenues go down.
One example of a follower of this rule is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, a company that grew almost eightfold, adjusted for inflation, between 1965 and 1995. During those thirty years, it held cost increases to a fixed percentage of its increase in revenues; a maximum 6 percent rise in costs for every 10 percent rise in revenues. After five or six years of trying, it also learned how to make sure that costs go down in the same proportion as revenues go down in a down period. It took quite a few years to make this work; now it's almost second nature in that company.
7月28日
稳定型企业的成本控制
在成本控制方面，一分预防胜过十分补救。
我们都知道，减掉多出来的五磅体重，要比一开始就不增加这五磅困难得多。没有哪个领域比成本控制更能证明“一分预防胜过十分补救”这句话的正确性。企业绝对有必要像鹰一样严密监控，确保成本增长的速度不及收入增长的速度；反过来，如果发生经济衰退、收入下降，成本至少也必须以同样快的速度下降。
遵循这一原则的一个例子，是世界上最大的制药企业之一。经通货膨胀因素调整后，这家公司在1965年至1995年间增长了近八倍。在这三十年中，它始终把成本增幅控制在收入增幅的一个固定比例以内：收入每增长10%，成本最多增长6%。经过五六年的尝试，它还学会了如何确保在业务低迷时期，成本能够按照收入下降的同等比例减少。公司用了相当多年才使这套方法有效运转；如今，这在公司内部几乎已经成为一种本能。
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