Continuous review and reinvention of company operations is key to successful business management, two renown local corporate executives have advised.

In fact, this approach to business is what helped Sandals Resorts International CEO Adam Stewart and Pan Caribbean Financial Services Limited (PCFS) CEO Donovan Perkins drive their respective firms out of two separate economic crises.

Both men were guest speakers at the Your Money eZine Business Summit on Tuesday at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge.

Stewart said critical to Sandal’s success is the hotel’s knack for continuously “reinventing the wheel” and “keeping relevant” through innovative services.

“We consider ourselves anywhere from four to five stars, and we have done that by introducing new programmes,” said Stewart.

“We were the first in the Caribbean to introduce butler service, swimming pool bars, hair dyers in the rooms etc” he added.

Indeed, it was this chain of thought which helped the resort to survive the global recession which hit the tourism sector hard. Stewart said the company did this with innovative cost cutting measures that did not impact the consumer experience.

“We had to find ways to strip costs in ways that have never been done before,” revealed the Sandals CEO.

Perkins noted that PanCaribbean is always “scanning the landscape to see how things are changing”. In fact, he said this was what allowed the firm to escape the mid-1990’s financial sector meltdown under which many local firms crumbled.

The philosophy for PanCaribbean was one of nimbleness and diversification. The firm went on an expansion drive, acquiring Montego Bay-based Lets Investment, giving it a greater stake in the financial markets in western Jamaica. Trafalgar Development Bank, Knutsford Capital Merchant Bank, and later Sigma Manufacturers Merchant Bank, were all acquired as well.

“What we did was to use our foreign exchange business to develop relationships with the big trading houses and grew with them,” said Perkins.

He added: “The next step was to look towards the future and realise that three million persons could not be serviced by 45 financial institutions, so we went through a process of merging and acquiring seven institutions starting back from 1998.”