The consequences of the Swiss National Bank lifting the euro floor are real!

At my current client, a medium-sized technology company, the consequences of the Swiss National Bank's cancellation of the euro floor became painfully apparent.
The company had been struggling with profitability for years and called me in December to reorganise the engineering department in order to increase productivity and thus become more competitive. The SNB's action on 15 January 2015 added an additional component in that not only profitability had to be increased, but sales figures also had to be reconsidered. With the new euro exchange rate, our products (approx. 90% export) became even more expensive on the market and therefore the sales budget had to be adjusted downwards in the long term. For a company that is already very close to (or below) the profitability limit, additional savings can only be achieved with great difficulty, i.e. in the long term. Purchases have already been optimised in recent years, meaning that further savings can only be achieved through more efficient processes (fewer hours).
In conjunction with the new sales budget (-30%), we therefore also had to adjust the structure accordingly and lay off 30% of our workforce. Together with the efficiency improvements that have already been introduced, we hope to be competitive again from 2016.