Planning Services.

Strategic Planning We facilitate strategic planning meetings for our clients. These meetings are generally held offsite. The purpose is to set long term (usually 5 to 7 year) goals for the company. The strategic plan is based on an analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis), along with other information and factors. We help our clients develop plans that take advantage of their strengths and opportunities, mitigate their weaknesses and threats, and incorporate other objectives of the company.

Execute the Plan Many companies set goals, make plans, and go through strategic planning. But when the planning sessions are over, everyone goes back to putting out fires and performing their daily routines and the strategic plan sits on the shelf gathering dust. We assist companies in putting together an action plan that identifies the person responsible for each task and a due date for the task to be completed. This is followed up with a series of strategic plan implementation meetings where the participants report their progress, or lack thereof.

Business planning This planning step falls between strategic planning and budgeting. It is a one or two year plan which reflects, and is consistent with, the strategic plan. Developing the business plan forces the leaders and managers of the company to agree on near term goals, sometimes exposing problems with the strategic plan. The information that is necessary to build the budget comes out of the business planning process.

Budgeting We assist clients with the development of budgets and budgeting models. These models vary in complexity from simple revenue and expense models to complex, long term models that project the balance sheet, helping to identify future capital requirements and loan covenant compliance issues.

Merger and acquisition - evaluation of M&A opportunities Assessing possible merger and acquisition candidates is difficult because of the multitude of unknowns. The advantage of involving us in your M&A analysis is that we will ask you the tough questions and help you to maintain your objectivity. The success rate of M&A’s is low so it is essential that you do not cut corners on due diligence or overlook integration issues.

Operations Support.

Operational review, development of metrics, and establishment of management reporting We can review the company’s operations and identify the company’s profit drivers. This allows us to develop metrics that can be used to monitor various aspects of your business. This will enable you to respond quickly to negative developments before they show up on the financial statements. Careful monitoring and active management of these metrics will increase the stability of your operations and should improve profitability. When necessary we can assist in the development of reports and policies to assist in the monitoring and management of your business.

Risk management We will help you develop and implement claim tracking policies, procedures, metrics, reporting, and training. This should result in a decrease in errors and claims, better quality, lower insurance rates, and greater profitability.

Establishing/implementing policies and procedures Policies and procedures make life much simpler as a company grows. When properly written and enforced, they can reduce the number of ad hoc decisions, which saves time, improves quality, and reduces risk.

Accounting/Finance Support.

Cash flow modeling We can help you develop cash flow models of varying degrees of complexity depending on your needs. Models can cover just a few weeks and be based on short term estimates of collections and cash requirements. Or they can be long term in nature, incorporating sales projections, related accounts receivable collections adjusted for business cycle trends. On the spend side, expected cash requirements can be broken down by fixed/non-discretionary and variable or discretionary costs.

Accounting system evaluation, selection, implementation We can help you evaluate your current accounting/information systems and help you evaluate and select new software. We can also assist in the implementation of the new software. We often find that companies purchase software and then wait for a convenient time for implementation. The problem is that there is never a convenient time to launch a new accounting/information system, yet failing to do so will impede your ability to manage your business and grow, costing you more money over the long term.

Financial analysis Most big business decisions require some financial analysis. If you do not have the resources in-house, or if you would like an independent analysis, we will be glad to help.

Establishing/implementing policies and procedures Policies and procedures make life much simpler as a company grows. They reduce the number of ad hoc decisions that need to be made which is a big time saver. They also improve quality and efficiency, and as a result reduce many risk exposures.

Management Support.

Management of Legal Budget The annual legal budget can be large for many companies. We will compare your legal cost to industry benchmarks, and look at the law firms you use and how you use them. We will analyze your utilization of in-house counsel or lack thereof. And we will consider if outsourced support and services may be appropriate for your company. We will then make recommendations on how to either reduce your cost or get more and better service from your legal budget.

Support for start-ups and small firms Most start-ups and small companies cannot justify a full time CFO, COO, or dedicated HR or IT staff. As a result, most of the tasks that would be done by those persons fall on the shoulders of the already too busy owner/entrepreneur, who may delegate the projects to someone in the organization that may or may not be qualified to deal with them. We can help deal with those tasks that you do not have the time or expertise to handle internally.

Corporate governance and business ethics As your company grows and has more stakeholders, the organization becomes more complex, and control issues start to crop up. At this point governance and business ethics become very important. Let us help you with this critically important aspect of your business.

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