Sony 2010 Annual Report Download - page 9

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6
target and achieved more than ¥330 billion of Group-
wide cost reductions in fiscal year 2009.
In addition, we have—for the first time in the com-
pany’s history—consolidated the purchasing power of
all of our electronics and game component purchases.
By doing this, we were able to substantially reduce our
number of suppliers, and we are well ahead of schedule
to achieve our target of reducing this number by half
by March 2011. We have also almost achieved our tar-
get of a 20%—or nearly ¥500 billion—reduction in our
annual procurement costs.
Finally, we aggressively managed inventory and
accounts receivable and payable, which resulted
in an improvement in our cash flow and financial
positioning, which enables us to pursue strategic
initiatives more effectively.
Our marketing initiatives are another important part of
our transformation. Given today’s competitive business
landscape, we must introduce our product lineup to
consumers more dynamically and directly. To this end,
our new Global Sales and Marketing Platform is reaching
new customers in new geographies by reinventing our
retail strategy on a global basis, entering new markets,
and penetrating existing markets more deeply. The
greatest tool that will allow us to accomplish all of this is
the Sony brand.
To help guide Sony and its brand through our ongo-
ing transformation, we have launched a unified brand
message, “make.believe”, for the Sony Group and
delivered a global launching campaign. “make.believe”
reflects Sony’s ability to turn ideas into reality and, more
importantly, to help consumers turn their own ideas into
reality—as we believe that anything you can imagine,
you can make real. Sony aims to inspire consumers
around the world with innovation and fun through our
unique combination of technology and entertainment
based on our electronics, game, motion picture, music,
mobile phone and network services businesses.
I want to assure you that our process of transforma-
tion is continuous—we are always looking for oppor-
tunities to be faster, more efficient, more creative and
more aggressive. We continue to drive costs out of the
company, to rightsize it for the competitive environ-
ment in which we operate, and to improve our ability to
generate sufficient returns on our investments for our
shareholders.