Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I say this a lot - and often get funny looks from people who think marketing is “just” PR or advertising or cranking out purty brochures. But here’s a great high-profile example: Dell’s cooking the books. (CNET). Key marketing trouble points from the article:

…Dell felt so pressured to meet Wall Street expectations that its finance department bent accounting rules to make up for shortfalls in certain quarters and underreported earnings results in others, each time ensuring that Dell seemed to hit earnings targets that financial analysts were expecting.

…Dell’s explanation is that not only did it not maintain a culture that emphasized strict adherence to GAAP rules, it didn’t have enough employees with the proper accounting training or experience to know better.

…In addition, Dell says inadequate resources in its accounting department are partly to blame, and–in a remarkable acknowledgment for a company that pioneered selling computers on the Internet–that much of its accounting is done manually, with very few electronic trails.

Hmmm…
Yet another company more focused on Wall Street than Main Street. Related Post: CEOs Are Walking the Wrong Street
Employees who don’t “know better.” (Great commitment to quality and your employee there, Dell.)
A company that sells technology, gives advice on it…and doesn’t use it. (Too bad they didn’t heed some of their own online advice in the Small Business 360 section for the accounting and finance industry, Automating the Process Helps Those in Charge of Government Compliance Meet the Challenge. Though they will likely never face – or deserve – the intense scrutiny given Enron or WorldCom, most companies have made complying with governmental requirements a top business priority. Yet, for many businesses – and the accountants, lawyers and others in charge of their companies’ compliance initiatives – meeting that objective continues to be a major challenge.)

Seems like a lot more than an accounting problem, now, doesn’t it?

Then there was the little “legal problem” between J&J and The American Red Cross.

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Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, Dell