Rather than a cause for alarm, as it used to be for customers and creditors, a turnaround or a restructuring today may be viewed positively as a chance for a company to manage a difficult situation proactively. Vendors and creditors have had experience working with companies in trouble. Provided communication is clear about the turnaround plan, vendors and creditors are more likely to cooperate. The company, in turn, needs to live up to its promise and perform to plan. 

Financial institutions themselves are stronger and have more bandwidth to deal with companies in trouble. Given a well-conceived turnaround plan, financial institutions are no longer closing the door in the face of a company that has run into difficulty. They are open to trying to work with their portfolio companies to find solutions. 

Social media, blogs, other online sources of information mean that companies are more transparent to the outside world than ever before. The internal workings within a company can become very public in this age of social media. Whether it’s disenchantment among the workforce or financial problems within a company, word gets out. A company’s problems become known much more quickly than in the past and this fact tends to put pressure on a company to take action. In the old days, companies could hide within their fortresses. Nowadays there is no hiding. Even the attempts to hide become known.

Today, fortunes are quickly made and then lost just as quickly. Business model innovation means that well-established industries, such as the record industry which lasted through the better part of the past century, are easily disrupted by new technologies and business models. This volatility in markets means that there is often opportunity in difficulty.

When business owners or CEOs experience financial difficulties or growing pains, this is the time for them to see their struggles as a credible opportunity to accelerate positive change within their companies rather than focusing only on the negative. A company that questions it's basic assumptions has a better opportunity than ever to transform itself fundamentally and present a new image to the marketplace.

Technology is rarely the sole solution for a company in need of a turnaround. But it is often an opportunity a company in difficulty needs to consider as a means of supplementing its capabilities. Often, additional technology can augment the efficiency or the profitability of a business. It’s a component of a wider solution that is sometimes lost in a risk-averse environment. Remember to look at how new technology can serve as an opportunity for improvement and build these opportunities into the company's turnaround plan.