Month: July 2023

As we close the fiscal year, it’s time to reflect upon the numerous challenges that Lenovo and the entire ICT companies have been managing, and the solid execution results and strategic breakthroughs we have delivered despite the tough market and all the uncertainties in the macro context.

Broadly speaking, global businesses were operating in a high inflation, high interest rate environment with exchange rate fluctuation and geopolitical tensions. For our industry, the past fiscal year also marked a turning point from a fast expansion period to a postpandemic, post hypergrowth era. It was a test not only for a company’s operational resilience to navigate a challenging time, but also for its strategic foresights to emerge out of this period stronger than ever, ready to win for the future.

Delivering Solid Results with Diversified Engines and Operational Excellence

I’d like to report that Lenovo delivered the most solid results we could reasonably hope for amid the ICT industry contraction phase in the past fiscal year.

Despite the broad market decline, we maintained a strong net margin comparable with the previous year and remain committed to doubling it in the medium term. This is a remarkable achievement. Our operational excellence keeps purchasing cost low with our global scale, ensures high productivity through inhouse manufacturing, turns inventory into cash fast through strong channel partnerships, and keeps a high efficiency of the entire company through strong expense management.

Our diversified engines in solutions, services and infrastructure demonstrated strong momentum and achieved hypergrowth in the past fiscal year. They not only helped offset the PC market decline, but also told a stellar growth story in themselves. Solutions and Services Group (SSG) continued to deliver double-digit growth with over 20% operating margin. Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) grew over 30% year on year at significant premium to market. As a result, we have dramatically increased the percentage of non-PC business in our revenue mix, which marks an important milestone in our transformation from a device or hardware company to a solution and service company.

And in PC market, the consumer demand for smart devices has been accelerating over the last three years, leading to channel overstock and then inventory correction. As a result, the PC shipments of the entire industry, including Lenovo, declined year on year, especially during the second half of the fiscal year. But Lenovo still outperformed the PC market in shipment and maintained our leadership position and industry leading profitability.

We believe the PC shipment has nearly bottomed by now, based on the activation number which reflects the real demand, as well as the channel inventory level, which has almost returned to the pre-pandemic level. From this point, the PC market is about to resume its year-on-year growth, as early as the second half of 2023. And Lenovo is ready to capture that growth from a position of strengths.

Enhancing Competitiveness to Capture Future Opportunities

As we enter the post-pandemic, post hypergrowth phase of our industry cycle, I believe our hard work over the past three years has elevated Lenovo to a new height not only in revenue, profitability and cash position, but also in our strategic direction. Going forward, we will continue to focus on the following areas.

First, we will accelerate our journey from a device or hardware company to a solution and service company. It all starts with providing total solutions to customers to solve industry specific pain points. And in this process, we will leverage our TruScale brand to boost Lenovo’s presence in the highly promising aaS market. Meanwhile, we will build more horizontal solutions including digital workplace, edge/AI, hybrid cloud, TruScale and sustainability solutions and embed them into vertical industries. Ultimately, these efforts will help steadily increase the percentage of solutions and services in our overall revenue mix.

Second, we will keep driving our investment in New IT. Lenovo has been the first one in the industry to define our vision of New IT, the technology architecture that includes client devices, edge computing, cloud computing, network and artificial intelligence. It differentiates from traditional IT which features on-prem data center and applications. Going forward, we are committed to doubling our R&D investment around New IT in medium term. Today, one in every five of Lenovo employees works in R&D or innovation, and we continue to bring innovative technology, products and solutions to the market, including rollable PC, Yoga Book 9i, ThinkPhone, ThinkReality VRX, extreme performance ThinkStation, new generation ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile, ThinkEdge, as well as smart space solutions such as ThinkSmart One, all launched last year, and many more in our pipeline.

Third, we will continue to leverage and optimize our unique “Global Sourcing, Local Delivery” model. Globally, we have access to advantageous resources, attract talent and build partnerships. And locally, we stay agile and flexible to serve customers’ needs. In supply chain, our global scale helps us secure key components. In manufacturing, we have our own factories to ensure capacity and uninterrupted supplies. In marketing, we use a “Global Might Local Fight” approach to build Lenovo’s global brand equity while generating local influence and demand in key markets. This is a strong core competency that Lenovo has built over years and will continue to make a big difference in the future.

And finally, we will maximize the advantages of One Lenovo. Today, customers need not just products but total solutions. Lenovo has all the pieces, including devices, infrastructure, solutions and services to serve their needs. And we will continue to leverage our existing platform and processes, build on our existing core competencies to grow adjacent business. The capabilities we’ve built with our core business are now the best soil that nurtures our new, diversified growth businesses. As One Lenovo, we are sharing the same vision, executing the same strategy, operating on the same platform, and building the same culture, in every business, every region, and every team.

Building a Smarter Future for All

Our solid results and clear strategic directions have prepared us well to navigate the current market headwinds, a challenging economy and numerous macro uncertainties. I firmly believe in the long-term opportunities driven by global digital and intelligent transformation. It is our strategic foresights and operational resilience that will help us transcend the industry cycle more smoothly than competition.

Beyond business success, our ultimate goal is to use technology to help solve humanity’s greatest challenges. We have made important progress including having our net-zero target by 2050 validated by Science Based Target initiative (SBTi). It’s our commitment that everything we do must serve the purpose of making life better, work more productive, society more equitable and inclusive, and our planet more sustainable.

To that end, let’s make the new fiscal year a new chapter in our journey of building a smarter future for all.

-YY

Read Lenovo’s Full Annual Report: click here

Becky and Tony Santoro are always willing to face challenges. One might even say the couple raises a coffee cup to them.

But it’s not just any old cup. It’s one that’s fostered love and support throughout the community, as the couple lifts others through their coffee shops and foster family nonprofit. And it’s one that sparked Truist teammates, who have supported both efforts through volunteerism and putting the couple’s coffee shop in their headquarters.

Becky and Tony’s story really begins at Michigan State University, where the couple met and bonded over a love of coffee. Degrees in hand, they uprooted their lives for teaching careers in North Carolina. Next came the births of their two children and the challenge of providing for them. (“Our family was growing, but our paychecks were not,” is how Tony puts it.)

They faced that challenge by working even harder. Suddenly they had four jobs, including Tony’s burgeoning interest in starting a coffee business. He roasted beans in their driveway between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. before heading to teach.

Amid these challenges, they added another: becoming foster parents. Their experiences led them to create Foster Village, a nonprofit that provides practical and emotional support to foster families. It was a decision that would change their lives—and the lives of the fostering community in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It was a lot. And some might have crumbled under all these pressures. But for the Santoros, each challenge was another opportunity to smile at each other and ask, “Why not?”

A loving space to give

During the Santoros’ seven years as teachers, they met children in the foster care system and witnessed the challenges of it.

They wanted to help, and explored the idea of becoming foster parents—despite their four jobs and their children, then ages 4 and 2. “I just felt like if we didn’t step into it, we’d always have an excuse not to,” says Becky, “and it felt like this was something that we were supposed to do. We still had this loving space to give.”

One hour after they were officially licensed, they got a call that a 1-year-old girl needed a safe home. Could they help?

The Santoros looked at each other and said, “Why not?”

The child came to them with just a blanket and the onesie she was wearing.

Doing good in the world through their beans

At the same time, Tony’s coffee business was getting underway. At first it was just a hobby. “I thought it was so interesting. You can buy green coffee beans, turn them brown, and then you can grind them and drink them,” he says.

His fondness for coffee is due in part to his courtship with Becky. Although the two grew up 3 miles apart in the Detroit suburbs, they didn’t meet till they got to Michigan State University, where Becky was a coffee shop barista. “When we’d go out to dinner, we wouldn’t get wine, we’d get coffee with dessert,” Tony says. “It was just always central to us.”

To make ends meet after the births of their children, Tony began selling his driveway-roasted coffee to friends, family, and even their church. That coffee was so popular that a friend asked, “What’s stopping you from making this your full-time career?”

That friend hired Tony to work for him and then slowly reduced Tony’s hours as that dream became a reality. Enderly Coffee Company began as a small-batch coffee-roasting business, focusing on great coffee and “doing good in the world through [their] beans.” They opened a coffee shop in Charlotte’s Enderly Park neighborhood, and in late 2021, a second coffee shop in Truist’s Charlotte headquarters.

It was fortunate there was plenty of coffee on hand for what came next.

Fostering a commitment to their community

When the couple began fostering, they expected it to be challenging, but the hardest parts weren’t what they’d anticipated. There were last-minute court dates and demands on their schedule. They assumed they’d find support through foster organizations, but “we started asking, ‘Where are the other foster parents, so we can just have some peer support?’ And we kept getting the answer that there really isn’t any peer support,” Becky says.

They decided to make the fostering experience better for other Charlotte-area families. Becky found a small Facebook group of local foster parents looking for community, all of whom were licensed by different adoption agencies. The group grew, and Becky recognized the momentum. “This isn’t just a personal need we have,” she says.

“There’s a gap in our city for supporting the caregivers who open up their homes.” Becky Santoro, co-founder and co-director of Foster Village Charlotte

The Santoros helped fill that gap with Foster Village, which they founded with others from that Facebook group. Many foster parents don’t continue fostering after their first placement, the couple says, because it’s so hard—and so isolating on top of that. Foster Village began addressing that isolation with peer support.

On the day Tony and Becky debuted their coffee shop in 2018, they also launched Foster Village. “I was on one side of town unpacking boxes, and Tony’s on the other side of town opening up a coffee shop,” Becky laughs.

A new business, a new organization—and a new baby

If that weren’t enough, the Santoros got another call from the agency they’d worked with before. Their foster daughter, whom they’d adopted, had a brother. Would they be interested in fostering him?

“Why not?” they both said (no doubt while putting on an extra pot of coffee).

“We had this new coffee shop and nonprofit, and then in walked our son like a hurricane,” Becky says. “He’s now our adopted son, and so now we have four kids under 11.”

That “I get it” feeling

There are close to 550 children in the foster care system in Charlotte but only 100 foster parents. Foster Village provides support for the people who open their homes to children who need them. There’s beauty in the kind of support “where people can look across the table from each other and have that ‘I get it’ feeling, and know that they can keep going,” Becky says. That support includes tangible items like a welcome pack, delivered by volunteers, that includes pajamas, water bottles, diapers—things a foster child may need but not necessarily show up with. “We believe that’s a time for us to give dignity to children who may be coming to a place with nothing,” she says.

Truist has long supported Foster Village. The Lighthouse Project is a companywide initiative that allows Truist teammates to address critical needs in their communities. Teammates choose nonprofit organizations to partner with, and Truist provides them with time off so they can offer hands-on support. Thousands of teammates have devoted thousands of volunteer hours of community service.

Tony says that two of their friends work at Truist, and both donated to Foster Village as part of the Lighthouse Project. They didn’t know each other, but when they saw they’d both supported the same cause, they decided to do more. They gathered other teammates and tackled Foster Village’s entire Amazon wish list.

“The Lighthouse Project also funded a lot of our welcome pack essentials,” says Becky. “Everything from car seats to toddler beds to pajamas to hair care products.”

That’s how Truist teammates became familiar with Foster Village, and as the new Truist headquarters took shape in Charlotte, Truist teammate Tina Fullard, head of corporate programs and hospitality services, realized that Foster Village and Enderly Coffee were related to each other.

Fullard was helping develop the Innovation & Technology Center (ITC) on the 14th floor of the building, and her goal was to bring in local vendors. It was a lot more work to do so, but “this is what we say we are,” she says. “We want to build better lives and communities. How do we do that? We invest in small businesses.”

That started a conversation with Aramark, Truist’s food management company, to put an Enderly Coffee location at Truist. In late 2021, the shop opened in the cutting-edge ITC.

“It just seems like our companies are cut from the same cloth,” Fullard says of Truist’s relationship with Foster Village and Enderly Coffee. “We want to align with partners who believe in the same things we do. And this partnership felt perfect.”

Truist teammates and others can give back with their cups of Enderly Coffee through Enderly’s Foster Village Blend coffee; proceeds help support Foster Village. “It’s a really solid medium roast,” says Tony. “Craft-roasted, ethically traded. And what we do is, as Foster Village has needs, we just jump in, write checks, buy supplies, and provide manpower, with those sales.”

“I love that I constantly hear from teammates, ‘Wow, this coffee is not only convenient— it’s actually good!” says Fullard.

Fostering dreams and paying it forward

Business has been brisk at ITC, and Tony is grateful for the support. “As a small, family-owned, local business, a partnership like this goes a really long way for us,” he says. “It would’ve been easy for Truist to put a big coffee company in there. I really like to see bigger organizations using their money intentionally to support the local economy. I think our world’s a better place when the local economy is flourishing in any city. That’s really important.”

“I really like to see bigger organizations using their money intentionally to support the local economy.” Tony Santoro, owner, Enderly Coffee

Enderly Coffee is indeed flourishing. After working with Aramark at Truist headquarters, Enderly is in talks to be the coffee supplier for future Aramark sites outside of Charlotte.

No matter how successful they get, the couple says that their purpose, through Foster Village and Enderly Coffee, is to lift up others. Tony hasn’t forgotten what his friend did to help him launch Enderly Coffee. In the same way, Tony supports the dreams of the people who work for him. “The jobs that we create are to support them in this season, similar to how my friend did for me,” he says.

Becky says it’s the same with the support Foster Village offers to those who need it. “Very much the root of who we are is we’re rooting for whatever you’re passionate about,” she says.

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Audio Talks. A podcast on all things audio presented to you by HARMAN and our family of audio brands including JBL, Harman Kardon and AKG. Host Oisin Lunny, music journalist and audio enthusiast, will interview expert guests, legends of the music industry and audio scientists to discuss the power of music and audio in all its facets. New episode bi-weekly every Thursday.

Originally published by Small Business Currents

By Emily Wheeler

At a time when inflation is on the rise and funding for microbusinesses is tight, entrepreneurs could need to find alternative funding solutions to meet their capital needs. Finding these solutions isn’t always simple.

As GoDaddy’s senior corporate sustainability manager and inclusive entrepreneurship expert, I speak frequently with microbusiness owners from all walks of life to understand both the challenges and solutions they face daily.

Entrepreneurship provides a vital component of today’s global economy, creating a platform for innovation, job creation and economic growth. However, 67% of microbusiness owners surveyed by GoDaddy’s Venture Forward research initiative reported being unaware of business assistance, funding, and government programs available to them.

As we know, not all entrepreneurs have the opportunity to pitch to deep-pocketed investors. Most entrepreneurs are scattered across the U.S. They’re scrappy and tenacious but don’t always get a fair shot. Socioeconomic status, race or location has hindered their ability to seize opportunities available to others. For example, Black entrepreneurs have historically faced disparities in securing venture capital funding and typically receive less than 2% of overall venture capital dollars each year.

For many microbusiness owners, one question continues to persist – what alternative funding solutions are available, and how will they help me scale my business and achieve growth-based goals?

I identified three helpful ways that entrepreneurs can leverage alternative funding solutions:

Microloans

There are a number of nonprofit and community-focused lenders who provide relatively small loans to existing businesses. For example, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) is a resource that provides grants and loans to entrepreneurs from underserved communities and further partners with local business development organizations to help entrepreneurs access capital and improve their business practices. A great starting point to learn more is the SBA’s approved list of microlenders.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is more of a grassroots method, where business owners can tap into their community for investments, rather than finding one person to support all of their funding needs. There are several crowdfunding platforms to choose from, like Kiva, where borrowers in the U.S. can secure 0% interest, $0 fee loans. Over the last eight years, GoDaddy and its employees lent more than $610,545 partnering with Kiva, supporting over 31,000 small businesses in 78 countries.

Those who find success with crowdfunding often leverage strategic marketing efforts, such as creating an entire social media campaign around the crowdfund to highlight progress and inspire the community to invest. Microbusiness owners can also create a custom hashtag to promote a campaign and encourage followers to use it within their posts. They can also temporarily swap their own profile picture with an eye-catching graphic to promote the crowdfunding campaign.

Small Business Grants

Who doesn’t like the idea of getting “free” money for their startup venture? Small business grants are available in a variety of categories from federal to state and regional to corporate. There are several resources available to help identify the best small business grant options, including through SBA.gov or local Small Business Development Centers, which offer resources to meet the unique needs of small business owners along their journey.

In addition to alternative funding solutions, there are other ways that entrepreneurs can scale their business during lean times, including:

Leveraging Generative AI

Generative AI isn’t just a tool for the enterprise or Big Tech workers. Small business owners can easily take advantage of this innovative technology to save time, cut costs and increase productivity. A recent GoDaddy survey showed that 57% of small business owners are interested in using Generative AI tools for their business. GoDaddy recently launched three new Generative AI products specifically geared toward solving small business challenges including:

Online Store Product Descriptions: Provides an AI-generated, creative, customized product description based on the product image.Customer Service Messages: With AI technology, it summarizes previous messages with the customer and generates a suggested response that can be adapted and sent.Instagram and Facebook Ads: Creates AI-generated advertisements that almost instantly attract customers on social media.

Building a Website

One of the easiest ways to increase a customer base and reach other people outside of the local community is to build a website. Even those who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy can tap into the many free website builder platforms available online. I recommend finding a template or designing a website that reflect business goals and how you want the customer to feel when learning more about your product or service.

Networking

Entrepreneurs often feel that they have to go at it alone. That do-it-yourself mentality is a nice motivator, but it isn’t sustainable in the long run. Microbusiness owners need a community or network of people that they can turn to for advice, guidance, and support. Networking in their local area can help them identify like-minded business owners who they can go to for solutions (or even just to vent). Empower by GoDaddy is a global social impact initiative that connects entrepreneurs with tools and resources by partnering with local community groups like the Better Business Bureau Serving the Pacific Southwest and Baltimore Impact Hub. The resounding benefit to this program is the chance for connecting and building relationships.

This isn’t the first time entrepreneurs are navigating tumultuous times, but it’s important to remember that there are resources, funding options and ways to build a successful business even when faced with the most challenging of circumstances.

Emily Wheeler is the Senior Corporate Sustainability Manager and Inclusive Entrepreneurship Expert at GoDaddy. Twitter Handle: @GoDaddy.

Funding stock image by EtiAmmos/Shutterstock