Universal Information Services

Recently I penned a post for the public relations and communications industry related to business acquisitions. It was the result of some thoughts related to a recent acquistion Universal had made of a formerly competing media monitoring firm. The gist of this post is that one should focus on serving clients as the ROI for an acquisition, as opposed to creating shareholder value. Too often those goals are at odds… or can be at odds.

There is a difference in how a company grows. One type of growth allows a company to add customers to their way of doing business by purchasing a similar company. In this scenario the customer is usually the beneficiary, receiving additional services and value now available through the purchasing company.

Another type of growth is shareholder growth. We often hear about this growth via the Wall Street Journal or CNBC. In this type of growth shareholder value is the intended beneficiary, and is commonly achieved through a series of company acquisitions. The problem with this second type of growth is that it is easy for the customer to become secondary to the goals of the growing corporation, with shareholders being the primary concern.

From an internal perspective, I’m proud of the way Universal Information Services has grown over the past 20 years. Although we have acquired approximately ten separate media monitoring firms, each acquisition has been the the result of the seller approaching Universal about handling their clients. In other words, the sellers come to Universal because of our track record of customer service, support, business ethics, and innovative media monitoring and measurement services. I’m proud of this fact and have to commend both my team and my father, Jim Murphy, for establishing such a reputation. [READ MORE AT COMMPRO.BIZ…]