Turnaround acquisitions are risky growth opportunities for today’s companies

When it comes to growth, businesses have two broad options. First, there’s organic growth — that is, progress made through internal efforts such as boosting sales, expanding into other markets, innovating new products or services, and improving operational efficiency. Second, there’s inorganic growth, which is achieved through externally focused activities such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and strategic partnerships.

Organic growth is, without a doubt, imperative to the success of most companies. But occasionally, or more often if you pursue M&A proactively, you may encounter the opportunity to acquire a troubled business. Although “turnaround acquisitions” can yield considerable long-term rewards, acquiring a struggling concern poses greater risks than buying a financially sound company.

Due diligence

Generally, successful turnaround acquisitions begin by identifying a floundering business with hidden value, such as untapped market potential, poor (but replaceable) leadership or excessive (yet fixable) costs.

But be careful: You’ve got to fully understand the target company’s core business — specifically, its profit drivers and roadblocks — before you start drawing up a deal. If you rush into the acquisition or let emotions cloud your judgment, you could misjudge its financial condition and, ultimately, devise an ineffective course of rehabilitative action. This is why so many successful turnarounds are conducted by buyers in the same industry as the sellers or by investors, such as private equity firms, that specialize in particular types of companies.

During the due diligence phase, pinpoint the source(s) of your target’s distress. Common examples include excessive fixed costs, lack of skilled labor, decreased demand for its products or services, and overwhelming debt. Then, determine what, if any, corrective measures can be taken.

Don’t be surprised to find hidden liabilities, such as pending legal actions or outstanding tax liabilities. Then again, you also might find potential sources of value, such as unclaimed tax breaks or undervalued proprietary technologies.

Cash management

Another critical step in due diligence is identifying cash flows, both in and out. Determine what products or services drive revenue and which costs hinder profitability. Would it make sense to divest the business of unprofitable products or services, subsidiaries, divisions, or real estate?

Implementing a long-term cash-management plan based on reasonable forecasts is also critical. Revenue-generating and cost-cutting measures — such as eliminating excessive overtime pay, lowering utility bills, and collecting unbilled or overdue accounts receivable — can often be achieved following a thorough evaluation of accounting controls and procedures.

Reliable due diligence hinges on whether the target company’s accounting and financial reporting systems can produce the appropriate data. If these systems don’t accurately capture transactions and fully list assets and liabilities, you’ll likely encounter some unpleasant surprises and struggle to turn around the business.

Buyers vs. sellers

Parties to a business acquisition generally structure the deal as a sale of either assets or stock. Buyers usually prefer asset deals, which allow them to select the most desirable items from a target company’s balance sheet. In addition, buyers typically receive a step-up in basis on the acquired assets, which lowers future tax obligations. And they’re often able to negotiate new contracts, licenses, titles and permits.

On the other hand, sellers generally prefer to sell stock, not assets. Selling stock simplifies the deal, and tax obligations are usually lower for sellers. However, a stock sale may be riskier for the buyer because the struggling target business remains operational while the buyer takes on its debts and legal obligations. Buyers also inherit sellers’ existing depreciation schedules and tax basis in target companies’ assets.

Reasonable assurance

For any prospective turnaround acquisition, you’ve got to establish reasonable assurance that the return on investment will likely exceed the acquisition’s immediate costs and ongoing risks. We can help you gather and analyze the financial reporting and tax-related information associated with any prospective M&A transaction.

© 2024

How businesses can better retain their sales people

The U.S. job market has largely stabilized since the historic disruption of the pandemic and the unusual fluctuations that followed. But the fact remains that employee retention is mission-critical for businesses. Retaining employees is still generally less expensive than finding and hiring new ones. And strong retention is one of the hallmarks of a healthy employer brand.

One role that’s been historically challenging to retain is salesperson. In many industries, sales departments have higher turnover rates than other departments. If this has been the case at your company, don’t give up hope. There are ways to address the challenge.

Lay out the welcome mat

For starters, don’t focus retention efforts only on current salespeople. Begin during hiring and ramp up with onboarding. A rushed, confusing or cold approach to hiring can get things off on the wrong foot. In such cases, new hires tend to enter the workplace cautiously or skeptically, with their eyes on the exit sign rather than the “upper floors” of a company.

Onboarding is also immensely important. Many salespeople tell horror stories of being shown to a cubicle with nothing but a telephone on the desk and told to “Get to it.” With so many people still working remotely, a new sales hire might not even get that much attention. Welcome new employees warmly, provide ample training, and perhaps give them a mentor to help them get comfortable with your business and its culture.

Incentivize your team

Even when hiring and onboarding go well, most employees will still consider a competitor’s job offer if the pay is right. So, to improve your chances of retaining top sales producers and their customers, consider financial incentives.

Offering retention bonuses and rewards for maintaining or increasing sales — in addition to existing compensation plans — can help. Make such incentives easy to understand and clearly achievable. Although interim bonus programs might be expensive in the near term, they can stabilize sales and prevent sharp declines.

When successful, a bonus program will help you generate more long-term revenue to offset the immediate costs. That said, financial incentives need to be carefully designed so they don’t adversely affect cash flow or leave your business vulnerable to fraud.

Give them a voice

Salespeople interact with customers and prospects in ways many other employees don’t. As a result, they may have some great ideas for capitalizing on your company’s strengths and shoring up its weaknesses.

Look into forming a sales leadership team to help evaluate the potential benefits and risks of goals proposed during strategic planning. The team should include two to four top sellers who are given some relief from their regular responsibilities so they can offer feedback and contribute ideas from their distinctive perspectives. The sales leadership team can also:

• Serve as a clearinghouse for customer concerns and competitor strategies,

• Collaborate with the marketing department to improve messaging about current or upcoming product or service offerings, and

• Participate in developing new products or services based on customer feedback and demand.

Above all, giving your salespeople a voice in the strategic direction of the company can help them feel more invested in the success of the business and motivated to stay put.

Assume nothing

Business owners and their leadership teams should never assume they can’t solve the dilemma of high turnover in the sales department. The answer often lies in proactively investigating the problem and then taking appropriate steps to help salespeople feel more welcomed and appreciated. We can help your company calculate turnover rate, identify and track its hiring and employment costs, and assess the feasibility of financial incentives.

© 2024

Working capital management is critical to business success

Success in business is often measured in profitability — and that’s hard to argue with. However, liquidity is critical to reaching the point where a company can consistently turn a profit.

Even if you pile up sales to the sky, your bottom line won’t flourish unless you have the cash to fund operations to fulfill all those orders. The good news is there’s a tried-and-true way to stay liquid while you grow your company. It’s called working capital management.

Multifunctional metric

Working capital is a metric — current assets minus current liabilities — that’s traditionally used to measure liquidity. Essentially, it’s the amount of accessible cash you need to support short-term business operations. Regularly calculating working capital can help you and your leadership team answer questions such as:

• Do we have enough current assets to cover current obligations?

• How fast could we convert those assets to cash if we needed to?

• What short-term assets are available for loan collateral?

Another way to evaluate liquidity is the working capital ratio: current assets divided by current liabilities. A healthy working capital ratio varies from industry to industry, but it’s generally considered to be 1.5 to 2. A ratio below 1.0 typically signals impending liquidity problems.

For yet another perspective on working capital, compare it to total assets and annual revenue. From this angle, working capital becomes a measure of efficiency.

Working capital requirement

The amount of working capital your company needs, known as its working capital requirement, depends on the costs of your sales cycle, operational expenses and current debt payments.

Fundamentally, you need enough working capital to finance the gap between payments from customers and payments to suppliers, vendors, lenders and others. To optimize your business’s working capital requirement, focus primarily on three key areas: 1) accounts receivable, 2) accounts payable and 3) inventory.

High liquidity generally equates with low credit risk. But having too much cash tied up in working capital may detract from important growth initiatives such as:

• Expanding into new markets,

• Buying better equipment or technology,

• Launching new products or services, and

• Paying down debt.

Failure to pursue capital investment opportunities can also compromise business value over the long run.

3 critical areas

The right approach to working capital management will obviously vary from company to company depending on factors such as size, industry, mission and market. However, as mentioned, there are three primary areas of the business to focus on:

1. Accounts receivable. The faster your company collects from customers, the more readily it can manage debt and capitalize on opportunities. Possible solutions include tighter credit policies, early bird discounts and collections-based sales compensation. Also, continuously improve your administrative processes to eliminate inefficiencies.

2. Accounts payable. From a working capital perspective, you generally want to delay paying bills as long as possible — particularly those from noncritical suppliers, vendors or other parties. One exception to this is when you can qualify for early bird discounts. Naturally, delaying payments should never drift into late payments or nonpayment, which can damage your business credit rating.

3. Inventory. If your company maintains inventory, recognize the challenge it presents to working capital management. Excessive inventory levels may dangerously reduce liquidity because of restocking, storage, obsolescence, insurance and security costs. Then again, insufficient inventory levels can frustrate customers and hurt sales. Be sure to give your inventory the “TLC” it deserves — including regular technology upgrades and strategic reconsideration of optimal levels.

The right balance

It isn’t easy to strike the right balance of maintaining enough liquidity to operate smoothly while also saving funds for capital investments and an emergency cash reserve. Our firm can help you assess precisely where your working capital stands and identify ways to manage it better.

© 2024

IT strategy showdown: Enterprise architecture vs. Agile

Few, if any, companies can operate successfully today without the right information technology (IT) strategy. And as businesses grow, their IT needs and infrastructures become even more complex and costly.

This push and pull of managing growth while grappling with tech has brought two broad approaches to IT strategy to the forefront: enterprise architecture and Agile. Let’s look at both so you can contemplate where your company stands and whether an adjustment may be warranted.

Following a blueprint

As its name implies, enterprise architecture is a strategic philosophy that focuses on mindfully designing or adapting a companywide framework for choosing, implementing, operating and supporting technology.

Think of an architect drawing up a blueprint for a commercial building — every aspect of that structure will be thought through ahead of time to suit the size, operational needs and mission of the company. So it goes with enterprise architecture, which seeks to ensure every IT decision and move:

Aligns with the goals of the business. Everything done technologically flows from the company’s current goals as established through ongoing strategic planning. So, for example, no new software acquisitions or upgrades can occur without approval from the enterprise architecture unit, which can be a dedicated department or a special committee.

Complies with standardization and organization protocols. Businesses using enterprise architecture construct their IT systems to integrate seamlessly and follow stated rules for access, use, upgrades, cybersecurity and so forth. They also organize their systems to support digital transformation (digitalizing all areas of the business) and adapt relatively quickly to technological changes.

In some cases, complies with an established framework. There are various widely accepted enterprise architecture frameworks for companies that don’t wish to do it all themselves or would like a starting point. These include The Open Group Architecture Framework, the Zachman Framework and ArchiMate.

Being project-focused

Rather than being a top-down blueprint for IT strategy, Agile generally approaches business tech on a project-by-project basis. The idea is to be as nimble as possible. Some of its key features include:

• Breaking up IT projects into small pieces (often called “sprints” or “iterations”),

• Collaborating closely with customers (whether internal or external),

• Using cross-functional teams, rather than only IT staff,

• Focusing on continuous improvement during and after projects,

• Emphasizing flexibility over strict protocols, and

• Valuing interpersonal collaboration over processes and tools.

Like enterprise architecture, Agile also has different time-tested versions that many types of organizations have used. These include Scrum and Kanban.

Leaning one way or the other

Not too long ago, many large companies began leaning away from enterprise architecture and toward Agile. Some experts attribute this to increased reliance on cloud-based storage and software, which tends to decentralize IT infrastructure.

Earlier this year, however, market research firm Forrester released the results of a survey of 559 technology professionals worldwide in its Modern Technology Operations Survey, 2023 report. Of respondents who work for large enterprises, 55% said their organizations had an enterprise architecture unit. That’s an 8% increase from the 47% reported in the 2022 version.

Some experts believe the renewed emphasis on enterprise architecture could be a reaction to a couple potential downsides of relying largely or solely on Agile. That is, businesses running small, speedy IT projects with little to no oversight may encounter higher “technical debt” — the predicament of getting suboptimal project results that lead to costly downtime and rework. Companies may also suffer from “vendor sprawl,” a term that describes having too many software providers because Agile project teams act independently.

Managing the costs

To be clear, enterprise architecture and Agile aren’t mutually exclusive. Many companies use both approaches to some extent. Work with your leadership team and professional advisors to devise and execute your best IT strategy. We can help you quantify, track and manage your company’s technology costs.

© 2024

Businesses must stay on guard against invoice fraud

Fraud is a pernicious problem for companies of all shapes and sizes. One broad type of crime that seems to be thriving as of late is invoice fraud.

In the second quarter of 2024, accounts payable software provider Medius released the results of a survey of 1,533 senior finance executives in the United States and United Kingdom. Respondents reported that their teams had seen, on average, 13 cases of attempted invoice fraud and nine cases of successful invoice fraud in the preceding 12 months. The average per-incident loss in the United States was $133,000 — which adds up to about $1.2 million annually.

Typical schemes

Invoice fraud can be perpetrated in various ways. Among the most common varieties is fraudulent billing. In billing schemes, a real or fake vendor sends an invoice for goods or services that the business never received — and may not have ordered in the first place.

Overbilling schemes are similar. Your company may have received goods it ordered, but the vendor’s invoice is higher than agreed upon. Duplicate billing, on the other hand, is where a fraud perpetrator sends you the same invoice more than once, even though you’ve already paid.

Employees sometimes commit invoice fraud as well. This can happen when a manager approves payments for personal purchases. In other cases, a manager might create fictitious vendors, issue invoices from the fake vendors and approve the invoices for payment.

Such schemes generally are more successful when employees collude. For example, one perpetrator might work in receiving and the other in accounts payable. Or a receiving worker might collude with a vendor or other outside party.

Best practices

The good news is there are some best practices that businesses can follow to discourage would-be perpetrators and catch those who try to commit invoice fraud. These include:

Know with whom you’re doing business. Verify the identity of any new supplier or vendor before working with that entity. Research its ownership, operating history, registered address and customer reviews. Also, ask for references so you can contact other companies that can vouch for its legitimacy.

Follow a thorough approval process. Establish a firm “no rubber stamp” policy for invoices. Train accounts payable staff to review them for red flags, such as unexpected changes in the amounts due or unusual payment terms. Manual alterations to an invoice should require additional scrutiny, as should the first several invoices from new vendors.

Instruct employees to contact an issuing vendor if anything seems strange or inaccurate about its invoice. In cases where the response lacks credibility or raises additional concerns, your business should decline to pay until the matter is resolved.

Implement additional antifraud controls as well. For instance, before approving payment, accounts payable staff should confirm with your receiving department that goods were delivered and check invoices against previous ones from the same vendor to ensure there are no discrepancies. Also, you may want to require more than one person to approve certain invoices for payment — such as those at or above a specified amount.

Leverage technology. Automating your accounts payable process can help prevent and detect invoice fraud. And, as you might expect, artificial intelligence (AI) is having an impact here.

One AI-driven technology called optical character recognition (OCR) can scan and read invoices to verify that line items and charged amounts match those vendors quoted you per your company’s financial records. OCR minimizes employee intervention, hinders collusion and makes diverting payments to personal accounts harder.

Decisive action

As the aforementioned survey indicates, invoice fraud is likely widespread. Be sure to put policies and procedures in place to prevent it as well as to respond swiftly and decisively if you suspect wrongdoing. Our firm can help you assess your accounts payable processes for efficiency, completeness and security.

© 2024

Which leadership skills are essential to strategic planning?

To help ensure continued stability and profitability, businesses need to engage in some form of strategic planning. A recent survey by insurance giant Travelers drives home this point.

In its 2024 CFO Study: A Travelers Special Report, the insurer surveyed 610 chief financial officers (CFOs) from companies with 500 or more employees in various industries. One of the questions posed was: What are the most valuable skills needed by today’s CFOs?

One might assume their answers would relate to being able to crunch numbers or understand complex regulations. But the top skill, coming from 62% of respondents, was “Strategic planning for future company success and resiliency.”

5 critical skills

Along with being somewhat surprising, the survey result begs the question: Which leadership skills, specifically, are essential to strategic planning? Among the five most important are the ability to:

1. View the company realistically and aspirationally. Strategic planning starts with a grounded view of where the company currently stands and a shared vision for where it should go. You and your leadership team need accurate information — including properly prepared financial statements, tax returns and sales reports — to establish a common perception of the state of the business. And from there, you need to be able to reach a mutually agreed-upon vision for the future.

2. Analyze the industry and market — and foresee impending changes. Everyone should be up to speed on the state of your industry and market from the pertinent perspective. Your CFO, for example, needs to be able to report on key performance indicators that place your company’s financial status in the context of industry averages and explain how those metrics compare to competitors in your market.

What’s more, everyone needs to develop the ability to make reasonable, fact-based predictions on where the industry and market are headed. Not every prediction will come true, but you’ve got to be able to forecast effectively as a team.

3. Understand customers and anticipate their needs. Again, from every member’s distinctive perspective, your leadership team needs to know who your customers truly are. This is where your marketing executive can come into play, laying out all the key features and demographics of those who buy your products or services.

Then you’ve got to put in the teamwork to determine what your customers want now and, even more important, what they will want in the future. That latter point is perhaps the biggest challenge of strategic planning.

4. Recognize the capabilities and resources of the business. Your company can operate only within realistic limits. These include the size of its workforce, the skill level of employees, and the availability of resources such as liquidity, physical assets and up-to-date technology.

Every member of your leadership team needs to be on the same page about what your business can realistically do before you decide where you can realistically go. Having a balanced collective of voices — financial, operational and technological — is critical.

5. Communicate effectively. Many companies struggle with strategic planning, not because of a shortage of ideas, but because of a failure to communicate. Leaders who tend to “silo” themselves and the knowledge of their respective departments can be particularly inhibitive. There are also those whose behavior or communication style is simply counterproductive. Continually work on improving how you and your leadership team communicate.

Confident growth

So, does your leadership team have all the requisite skills to succeed at strategic planning? If not, there are certainly ways to upskill your key players through training and performance management. We can help your business gather the financial information it needs to plan for the future confidently and decisively.

© 2024

Brand audits can help companies in a variety of ways

A strong brand can help boost revenue, while a weaker one may reduce sales opportunities and stifle growth.

Like many business owners, you’ve probably spent considerable time and energy crafting your company’s brand. Doing so has likely involved coming up with a memorable business name and logo, communicating with customers in a distinctive manner, and, above all, building a strong reputation in your market.

So, how’s all that going? Although your bottom line can certainly tell you a thing or two about the current success of your business, brand strength can be a little trickier to put a finger on. That’s why many companies conduct brand audits — essentially, formal reviews of a brand’s efficacy and market standing.

Data to gather

There are many ways to conduct a brand audit. The optimal steps for your business will depend on factors such as your industry, your company size and the popularity of your brand.

But most audits have certain things in common. For starters, they generally rely on information you already have on hand or could easily generate. Examples include:

Sales data. One objective of a brand audit is to identify sales-related key performance indicators and trends that may relate to branding. Essentially, if sales have slumped, is your brand partly to blame? And if so, why?

Website analytics. Brand audits usually investigate whether site traffic is trending upward or downward. They also typically determine how much time visitors spend on your site and on which pages. A strong brand will draw consistent visitors who tend to stick around. A weaker one is often indicated by a large number of accidental visitors who leave quickly.

Social media interactions. Although social media has its challenges and downsides, one enormous benefit is that each of your accounts should provide a wealth of interaction data. Brand audits can analyze this information over time to assess brand strength — and determine whether it’s rising or falling.

Customers and employees

Most brand audits also involve gathering the thoughts and opinions of two major constituencies: customers and employees.

Customers, of course, represent the richest source of insight into brand strength. Brand audits can involve surveys that posit various questions to customers and prospects about your brand. But such a survey needs to be carefully designed. You’ve got to keep it short, clear and easy to complete. Most are now conducted online.

Employees can also tell you things about your brand that you might not know or haven’t thought about. Your sales staff, for instance, could be getting feedback — positive or negative — from customers and prospects. So, an employee survey focused on brand-related issues can be a useful part of an audit.

More than marketing

Generally, brand audits are conducted for marketing purposes. They can help your marketing department determine how to enhance your brand — or potentially even whether you need to undertake a full-blown rebrand. But regular brand audits can also benefit strategic planning. You may even discover that someone has been using your brand fraudulently!

Precisely who should conduct a brand audit typically depends on business size. Larger companies with sizable internal marketing teams may be able to do it themselves. But many small to midsize businesses turn to marketing consultants or agencies to do the job. Our firm can help you assess the costs of a brand audit, as well as gather and analyze some of the financial data involved.

© 2024

Business owners sometimes need to switch successors

For many business owners, choosing a successor is the most difficult task related to succession planning. Owners of family-owned businesses, who may have multiple children or other relatives to consider, particularly tend to struggle with this tough choice.

What’s worse, many business owners’ initial picks for a successor don’t work out. Over time, the chosen person can prove to be unqualified, incapable or unwilling to fulfill a leadership role. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t panic. There are some measured steps you can take to resolve the matter.

Ask around

Before you dismiss your chosen successor, discuss the situation with several objective parties. These might include professional advisors, such as your CPA and attorney, as well as trusted family members, friends or colleagues with business experience.

Your goal is to determine whether your perception is off the mark. You may think, for instance, that your successor lacks the necessary skills to run your company. But the person might simply have a different leadership style than you do. Talking with others may help you put things in perspective.

Look for ways to help

If you come to believe that, with some work, your successor may still be capable of running the business after all, meet with the person. State your concerns and outline what must change.

And don’t forget to listen. Ask why your successor is having the difficulties you’ve pointed out. Perhaps it’s a lack of formal training in one aspect of the job. In such cases, there may be a class that can help provide the needed education, or maybe more mentoring from you might solve the problem.

It’s also possible your successor is facing personal issues that are getting in the way of work. For example, the person may be having financial problems, battling an addiction, or struggling in a marriage or other personal relationship. By listening, you can find out what the specific issues are and how you may be able to help.

Avoid past mistakes

After talking with others, and perhaps your successor, you may still feel the person needs to be replaced. If you decide to move on to someone else, tell your successor as soon as possible and explain why. Being honest and forthright, though difficult, will help settle the matter efficiently. As part of the conversation, ask whether there’s anything you could’ve done differently to avoid the impasse that developed.

Following that discussion, reconstruct the succession planning process to determine what led you to choose your initial successor. Review personal notes, memos and emails. Speak again with your professional advisors as well as trusted employees, family members, friends and colleagues about picking someone new. Ultimately, you want to develop objective criteria for your new successor and eliminate the impediments that kept your initial choice from working out.

Finally, if your second choice also doesn’t work out, stay open to the possibility that the problem may not lie with your prospective successors. It’s possible that the demands you’re placing on a successor may be somewhat unreasonable, or that you’re inadequately communicating your wishes and expectations.

Prepare for contingencies

Many business owners choose successors, work diligently to mentor them and transition smoothly into retirement with their companies in safe hands. But, as you well know, rarely does everything go exactly as planned in the business world. Preparing for contingencies is key in succession planning. As part of that effort, your FMD advisor can help you integrate savvy tax and financial strategies into your plan.

© 2024

Businesses should stay grounded when using cloud computing

For a couple decades or so now, companies have been urged to “get on the cloud” to avail themselves of copious data storage and a wide array of software. But some businesses are learning the hard way that the seemingly sweet deals offered by cloud services providers can turn sour as hoped-for cost savings fail to materialize and dollars left on the table evaporate into thin air.

Unclaimed discounts

One source of the trouble was revealed in a report entitled 2024 Effective Savings Rate Benchmarks and Insights, released earlier this year by cloud solution provider ProsperOps.

After analyzing $1.5 billion worth of Amazon Web Services (AWS) bills submitted to hundreds of organizations over a 12-month period, the report writers found that more than half of those organizations neglected to claim discounts baked into their cloud computing deals. As a result, the organizations paid full on-demand rates for “compute” services, such as data processing and computer memory, resulting in unnecessarily high costs.

The predicament reveals a key risk of cloud computing arrangements — particularly with major providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud: They’re complicated. Among the chief advantages of the cloud is that it’s scalable; companies can expand or diminish their computing services as their needs dictate. But with scalability, and other cloud functions, comes intense billing complexity that makes it difficult to control costs.

Best practices

So, what can your business do to ensure high cloud costs don’t rain on your parade? Here are a few best practices:

Know what you’re getting into. Just as you would for any other business contract, be sure you, your leadership team and your professional advisors thoroughly review and approve the terms of a cloud services agreement. Generally, the more predictable the pricing, the better.

Get familiar with your bill. Cloud computing invoices can be just as complex as the contracts, if not more so. Dedicate the time and resources to training yourself and other pertinent staff members to be able to read and understand your bill. If something seems inaccurate or difficult to understand, contact your provider for clarification.

Identify discounts … and claim them! If there’s one clear lesson from the aforementioned report, it’s that discounts matter and you should do everything in your power not to leave them on the table. Customers often have three types of savings “levers” to choose from: commitment-based discounts, volume-based discounts and enterprise discount programs.

Learn as much as you can about those offered by your provider. Then use carefully identified metrics to determine eligibility for discounts and claim them when you qualify. Many cloud computing platforms have built-in dashboards that enable you to visualize various metrics. Or you may be able to access a third-party dashboard via a web browser.

Review overall usage. At least once a year, take a broad look at precisely how you’re using the cloud. You may be able to scale down and save money. Also look for unused resources. If you’re paying for a service or certain type of software that you’re not using, ask your provider to discontinue it.

Find the savings

For many types of businesses, cloud computing has become a mission-critical resource. Whether this describes your company or you’re just using the cloud for efficiency and convenience, it likely represents a significant expense that you should manage carefully. Our firm can help you assess the costs — and identify the potential savings — of your current cloud computing arrangement or a prospective one.

© 2024

Could a 412(e)(3) retirement plan suit your business?

When companies reach the point where they’re ready to sponsor a qualified retirement plan, the first one that may come to mind is the 401(k). But there are other, lesser-used options that could suit the distinctive needs of some business owners. Case in point: the 412(e)(3) plan.

Nuts and bolts

Unlike 401(k)s, which are defined contribution plans, 412(e)(3) plans are defined benefit plans. This means they provide fixed benefits under a formula based on factors such as each participant’s compensation, age and years of service.

For 2024, the annual benefit provided by 412(e)(3)s can’t exceed the lesser of 100% of a participant’s highest three-year average compensation or $275,000. As with other defined benefit plans, 412(e)(3)s are funded only by employers. They don’t accept participant contributions.

But unlike other defined benefit plans, which are funded through a variety of investments, 412(e)(3)s are funded with annuity contracts and insurance. In fact, the IRS refers to them as “fully insured” plans. The name “412(e)(3)” refers to Section 412(e)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which authorizes the plan type’s qualified status.

Under Sec. 412(e)(3), defined benefit plans funded with annuity contracts and insurance aren’t subject to minimum funding requirements — so long as certain conditions are met. Companies sponsoring these plans don’t have to make annual actuarial calculations or mandatory contributions. However, they risk penalties if a plan’s insurer doesn’t satisfy certain obligations. In other words, the plan needs to be safely insured.

Potential benefits

Some experts advise relatively older business owners who want to maximize retirement savings in a short period to consider 412(e)(3)s because of the way defined benefit plans differ from defined contribution plans. That is, business owners who sponsor and participate in defined benefit plans can take a bigger share of the pie — particularly if they have few, if any, highly compensated employees. Meanwhile, they can also enjoy substantial tax deductions for plan contributions.

In addition, 412(e)(3)s may be more attractive than other defined benefit plans for some small business owners. Although they tend to sacrifice potentially higher investment returns, these plans offer greater flexibility by using potentially lower-risk and easy-to-administer annuity contracts and insurance. They might also appeal to closely held business owners who want to maximize tax-deductible contributions to a retirement plan in the early years of ownership.

As is the case with all defined benefit plans, however, sponsors must have the financial stability to support their plans indefinitely. So, 412(e)(3)s usually aren’t appropriate for start-ups.

Administrative requirements

Tax-favored treatment for 412(e)(3)s isn’t automatic. These plans must meet various requirements as spelled out in the tax code.

For example, as mentioned, 412(e)(3)s must be funded exclusively by the purchase of annuity contracts or a combination of annuity contracts and insurance. Sponsors must buy the contracts and/or insurance from insurers licensed by at least one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia.

Also, the contracts must provide for level annual (or more frequent) premium payments starting on the date each participant joins the plan. Premium payments need to end no later than the normal retirement age of a participant — or by the date the individual ceases participation in the plan, if earlier.

These are just a couple examples of the rules involved. It’s critical to fully understand all the requirements before sponsoring a plan.

An intriguing possibility

A 412(e)(3) plan may be an under-the-radar choice for some businesses under the right circumstances. For help choosing the best plan for your company, contact us.

© 2024

How family businesses can solve the compensation puzzle

Every type of company needs to devise a philosophy, strategy and various policies regarding compensation. Family businesses, however, face additional challenges — largely because they employ both family and non-family staff.

If your company is family-owned, you’ve probably encountered some puzzling difficulties in this area. The good news is solutions can be found.

Perspectives to consider

Compensation issues in family businesses are often two-pronged because they can arise both 1) within the family and 2) between family and nonfamily employees. Salary inequities among siblings, for example, can breed resentment and fighting. However, simply paying them all the same salary can also create problems if one works harder and contributes more than the others.

Second, family business owners may feel it’s their prerogative to pay working family members more than their nonfamily counterparts — even if they’re performing the same job. Although owners naturally have the best interests of their loved ones at heart, these decisions may inadvertently lower morale among essential nonfamily employees and risk losing them.

Nonfamily staff may tolerate some preferential treatment for family employees, but they could become disgruntled over untenable differences. For instance, nonfamily employees often reach a breaking point when they feel working family members are underperforming and getting away with it, or when they believe family employees are behaving counterproductively or unethically.

Ideas to ponder

Effectively addressing compensation in a family business calls for a clear, objective understanding of the company’s distinctive traits, culture and strategic goals. A healthy dash of creativity helps, too. There’s no one right way of handling the matter. But there are some commonly used strategies that may be helpful in determining compensation for the two major groups involved.

When it comes to family employees, think beyond salary. Many family businesses intentionally keep salaries for these individuals low and make up the difference in equity. Because working family members are generally in the company for the long haul, they’ll receive increasing benefits as their equity shares grow in value. But you also must ensure their compensation is adequate to meet their lifestyle needs and keep up with inflation.

Incentives are usually a key motivator for family employees. You might consider a combination of short-term rewards paid annually to encourage ongoing accomplishments and long-term rewards to keep them driving the business forward.

On the other hand, nonfamily employees typically recognize that their opportunities for advancement and ownership are generally more limited in a family business. So, higher salaries and a strong benefits package can be important to attracting and retaining top talent.

Another way to keep key nonfamily staff satisfied is by giving them significant financial benefits for staying with the company long term. There are various arrangements to consider, including phantom stock or nonqualified deferred compensation plans.

You can do it

If your family business has been operating for a while, overhauling its approach to compensation may seem overwhelming. Just know that there are ways to tackle the challenges objectively and analytically to arrive at an overall strategy that’s reasonable and equitable for everyone. Our firm can help you identify and quantify all the factors involved.

© 2024

Could conversational marketing speak to your business?

Businesses have long been advised to engage in active dialogues with their customers and prospects. The problem was, historically, these interactions tended to take a long time. Maybe you sent out a customer survey and waited weeks or months to gather the data. Or perhaps you launched a product or service and then waited anxiously for the online reviews to start popping up.

There’s now a much faster way of dialoguing with customers and prospects called “conversational marketing.” Although the approach isn’t something to undertake lightly, it could help you raise awareness of your brand and drive sales.

Concept and goal

The basic concept behind conversational marketing is to strike up real-time discussions with customers and prospects as soon as they contact you. You’re not looking to give them canned sales pitches. Instead, you want to establish authentic social connections — whether with individuals or with representatives of other organizations in a business-to-business context.

The overriding goal of conversational marketing is to accelerate and enhance engagement. Your aim is to interact with customers and prospects in a deeper, more meaningful way than, say, simply giving them a price list or rattling off the specifications of products or services.

In accomplishing this goal, you’ll increase the likelihood of gaining loyal customers who will generate steady or, better yet, increasing revenue for your business.

Commonly used channels

The nuts and bolts of conversational marketing lies in technology. If you decide to implement it, you’ll need to choose tech-based channels where your customers and prospects most actively contact you. Generally, these tend to be:

Your website. The two basic options you might deploy here are chatbots and live chat. Chatbots are computer programs, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), that can simulate conversations with visitors. They can either appear immediately or pop up after someone has spent a certain amount of time on a webpage. Today’s chatbots can answer simple questions, gather information about customers and prospects, and even qualify leads.

With live chat, you set up an instant messaging system staffed by actual humans. These reps need to be thoroughly trained on the principles and best practices of conversational marketing. Their initial goal isn’t necessarily to sell. They should first focus on getting to know visitors, learning about their interests and needs, and recommending suitable products or services.

Social media. More and more businesses are actively engaging followers in comments and direct messages on popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. This can be a tricky approach because you want responses to be as natural and appropriately casual as possible. You don’t want to sound like a robot or give anyone the “hard sell.” Authenticity is key. You’ll need to carefully choose the platforms on which to be active and train employees to monitor those accounts, respond quickly and behave properly.

Text and email. If you allow customers and prospects to opt-in to texts and emails from your company, current AI technology can auto-respond to these messages to answer simple questions and get the conversation rolling. From there, staff can follow up with more personalized interactions.

A wider audience

Like many businesses, yours may have already been engaging in conversational marketing for years simply by establishing and building customer relationships. It’s just that today’s technology enables you to formalize this approach and reach a much wider audience. For help determining whether conversational marketing would be cost-effective for your company, contact us.

© 2024

Businesses must face the reality of cyberattacks and continue fighting back

With each passing year, as networked technology becomes more and more integral to how companies do business, a simple yet grim reality comes further into focus: The cyberattacks will continue.

In fact, many experts are now urging business owners and their leadership teams to view malicious cyber activity as more of a certainty than a possibility. Why? Because it seems to be happening to just about every company in one way or another.

A 2023 study by U.K.-based software and hardware company Sophos found that, of 3,000 business leaders surveyed across 14 countries (including 500 in the United States), a whopping 94% reported experiencing a cyberattack within the preceding year.

Creating a comprehensive strategy

What can your small-to-midsize business do to protect itself? First and foremost, you need a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that accounts for not only your technology, but also your people, processes and as many known external threats as possible. Some of the primary elements of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy are:

• Clearly written and widely distributed cybersecurity policies,

• A cybersecurity program framework that lays out how your company: 1) identifies risks, 2) implements safeguards, 3) monitors its systems to detect incidents, 4) responds to incidents, and 5) recovers data and restores operations after incidents,

• Employee training, upskilling, testing and regular reminders about cybersecurity,

• Cyber insurance suited to your company’s size, operations and risk level, and

• A business continuity plan that addresses what you’ll do if you’re hit by a major cyberattack.

That last point should include deciding, in consultation with an attorney, how you’ll communicate with customers and vendors about incidents.

Getting help

All of that may sound a bit overwhelming if you’re starting from scratch or working off a largely improvised set of cybersecurity practices developed over time. The good news is there’s plenty of help available.

For businesses looking for cost-effective starting points, cybersecurity policy templates are available from organizations such as the SANS Institute. Meanwhile, there are established, widely accessible cybersecurity program frameworks such as the:

• National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework,

• Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls, and

• Information Systems Audit and Control Association’s Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies.

Plug any of those terms into your favorite search engine and you should be able to get started.

Of course, free help will only get you so far. For customized assistance, businesses always have the option of engaging a cybersecurity consultant for an assessment and help implementing any elements of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. Naturally, you’ll need to vet providers carefully, set a feasible budget, and be prepared to dedicate the time and resources to get the most out of the relationship.

Investing in safety

If your business decides to invest further in cybersecurity, you won’t be alone. Tech researcher Gartner has projected global spending on cybersecurity and risk management to reach $210 billion this year, a 13% increase from last year. It may be a competitive necessity to allocate more dollars to keeping your company safe. For help organizing, analyzing and budgeting for all your technology costs, including for cybersecurity, contact us.

© 2024

8 key features of a customer dispute resolution process for businesses

No matter how carefully and congenially you run your business, customer disputes will likely happen from time to time.

Some of the complaints may be people looking to negotiate a discount, “game the system” or even outright defraud you. But others could be legitimate complaints arising from mistakes on your company’s part, technological glitches or, perhaps worst of all, fraudulent actions by a third party.

Whatever the case may be, you can protect your business’s reputation and even strengthen its brand by creating and maintaining an effective customer dispute resolution process that includes eight key features:

1. Easily accessible channels of communication. Post easy-to-find and clearly written directions on your website, social media accounts and other channels detailing how customers can report problems, suspected errors and fraud on their accounts. The directions should include up-to-date contact info for your company and identify any forms or documentation required. Also provide a succinct description of your dispute resolution process, so customers know what to expect.

2. An efficient timeline. Naturally, it’s imperative to respond as quickly as possible to customer concerns or complaints. Today’s technology allows businesses to immediately send automated replies confirming receipt of the customer’s message and assuring the sender that you’re investigating. If the matter appears legitimate, you can follow up with a resolution timeline stating the next steps in the process.

3. Empathy and understanding. Train employees to listen patiently and acknowledge to customers the inconvenience of potential errors or fraud on their accounts. Remind customer-facing staff to keep open minds and not automatically assume any customer is making a false report.

4. Rigorous investigatory techniques. Thoroughly investigate disputes to ascertain root causes. Precisely how you should do so will depend on the nature of your industry and operations, as well as the specifics of the complaint.

To ensure consistency and build a robust document trail, however, require employees performing investigations to first gather all available account information and transaction records. Investigators should also carefully preserve emails and other electronic messages, as well as record or transcribe phone conversations with complaining customers and, if applicable, other involved parties.

5. Strong data protection. Your business should already have up-to-date cybersecurity safeguards in place to prevent data breaches and identity theft. But your customer dispute resolution process should include additional layers of protection. For example, apply “the principle of least privilege,” which means, in this case, only authorized employees directly involved in investigations have access to pertinent data.

6. Transparency and proactive follow-ups. Keep customers informed throughout the entire process. Don’t “leave them hanging” and wait for them to follow up with you. Provide them with regular updates on investigations and inform them of outcomes as soon as they’re available.

7. Timely resolution. If a dispute is found to be in the customer’s favor, quickly make the necessary corrections — such as refunds or account adjustments. Also consider providing a temporary discount, free replacement items or complementary services. Many companies also issue an apology, though you may want to consult your attorney on the language.

If you deny a claim, provide a detailed explanation of the evidence and your reasoning. Consider allowing some customers to appeal decisions not in their favor by submitting supplemental information.

8. Documentation and analysis with an eye on continuous improvement. Last, be sure to continually learn from incidents. Retain records of all customer disputes and fraud claims to identify patterns and trends. Use this data to improve your internal controls and investigatory processes, make decisions on technology upgrades, and train customer-facing teams. By doing so, you may be able to prevent disputes in the future or at least lessen their frequency.

© 2024

B2B businesses need a cohesive strategy for collections

If your company operates in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, you’ve probably experienced some collections challenges.

Every company, whether buyer or seller, is trying to manage cash flow. That means customers will often push off payments as long as possible to retain those dollars. Meanwhile, your business, as the seller, needs the money to meet its revenue and cash flow goals.

There’s no easy solution, of course. But you can “grease the wheels,” so to speak, by strategically devising and continuously improving a methodical collections process.

Payment terms

Getting paid promptly depends, at least in part, on the terms you set forth and customers agree to. Be sure payment terms for your company’s products or services are written in unambiguous language that includes specific due dates, payment methods and late-payment penalties. To the extent feasible, use contracts or signed payment agreements to ensure both parties understand their obligations.

If your business operates on a project basis, try to negotiate installment payments for completion of specific stages of the work. This approach may not be necessary for shorter jobs but, for longer ones, it helps assure you’ll at least receive some revenue if the customer runs into financial trouble or a dispute arises before completion.

Effective invoicing 

Invoice promptly and accurately. This may seem obvious, but invoicing procedures can break down gradually over time, or even suddenly, when a company gets very busy or goes through staffing changes. Monitor relevant metrics such as days sales outstanding, revenue leakage and average days delinquent. Act immediately when collections fall below acceptable levels.

Also, don’t let the essential details of invoicing fall by the wayside. Ensure that you’re sending invoices to the right people at the right addresses. If a customer requires a purchase order number to issue payment, be sure that this requirement is built into your invoicing process.

In today’s world of high-tech money transfers, offering multiple payment options on invoices is critical as well. Customers may pay more quickly when they can use their optimal method.

Reminders and follow-ups

Once you’ve sent an invoice, your company should have a step-by-step process for reminders and follow-ups. A simple “Thank you for your business!” email sent before payment is due can reiterate the due date with customers. From there, automated reminders sent via accounts receivable (AR) or customer relationship management (CRM) software can be helpful.

If you notice that a payment is late, contact the customer right away. Again, you can now automate this to begin with texts or emails or even prerecorded phone calls. Should the problem persist, the next logical step would be a call from someone on your staff. If that person is unable to get a satisfactory response, elevate the matter to a manager.

These steps should all occur according to an established timeline. What’s more, each step should be documented in your AR or CRM software so you can measure and improve your company’s late-payment collections efforts.

Typically, the absolute last step is to send an outstanding invoice to a collection agency or a law firm that handles debt collection. However, doing so will usually lower the amount you’re able to collect and typically ends the business relationship. So, it’s best viewed as a last resort.

What works for you

If your B2B company has been operational for a while, you no doubt know that collections aren’t always as simple as “send invoice, receive payment.” It often involves interpersonal relationships with customers and being able to exercise flexibility at times and assertiveness at others. For help analyzing your collections process, identifying key metrics and measuring all the costs involved, contact us.

© 2024

Why some businesses choose to execute a pivot strategy

When you encounter the word “pivot,” you may think of a politician changing course on a certain issue or perhaps a group of friends trying to move a couch down a steep flight of stairs. But businesses sometimes choose to pivot, too.

Under a formal pivot strategy, a company consciously changes its strategic focus in a series of carefully considered and executed moves. Obviously, this is an endeavor that should never be undertaken lightly or suddenly. But there’s no harm in keeping it in mind and even exploring the feasibility of a pivot strategy under certain circumstances.

5 common situations

For many businesses, five common situations often prompt a pivot:

1. Financial distress. When revenue streams dwindle and cash flow slows, it’s critical to pinpoint the cause(s) as soon as possible. In some cases, you may be able to blame temporary market conditions or a seasonal decline. But, in others, you may be looking at the irrevocable loss of a “unique selling proposition.”

In the latter case, a pivot strategy may be in order. This is one reason why companies are well-advised to regularly generate proper financial statements and projections. Only with the right data in hand can you make a sound decision on whether to pivot.

2. Lack of identity. Does your business offer a wide variety of products or services but have only one that clearly stands out? If so, you may want to pivot to focus primarily on that product or service — or even make it your sole offering.

Doing so typically involves cost-cutting and streamlining of processes to boost efficiency. In a best-case scenario, you might end up having to invest less in the business and get more out of it.

3. Weak demand. Sometimes the market tells you to pivot. If demand for your products or services has been steadily declining, it may be time to reimagine your strategic goals and pivot to something that will generate more dependable revenue.

Pivoting doesn’t always mean going all the way back to square one and completely rewriting your business plan. More often, it calls for targeted changes to production, pricing and marketing. For example, you might redefine your target audience and position your products or services as no hassle, budget-friendly alternatives. Or you could take the opposite approach and position yourself as a high-end “boutique” option.

4. Tougher competition. Many industries have seen “disrupters” emerge that upend the playing field. There’s also the age-old threat of a large company rolling in and simply being too big to beat.

A pivot can help set you apart from the dominant forces in your market. For example, you might seek to compete in a completely different niche. Or you may be able to pivot to exploit the weaknesses of your competitors — perhaps providing more personalized service or quicker delivery or response times.

5. Change of heart. In some cases, a pivot strategy may originate inside you. Maybe you’ve experienced a shift in your values or perspective. Or perhaps you have a new vision for your business that you feel passionate about and simply must pursue.

This type of pivot tends to involve considerable risk — especially if your company has been profitable. You should also think about the contributions and well-being of your employees. Nevertheless, one benefit of owning your own business is the freedom to call the shots.

Never a whim

Again, a pivot strategy should never be a whim. It must be carefully researched, discussed and implemented. For help applying thorough financial analyses to any strategic planning move you’re considering, contact us.

© 2024

Business owners, your financial statements are trying to tell you something

Business owners are commonly and rightfully urged to regularly generate financial statements in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). One reason why is external users of financial statements, such as lenders and investors, place greater trust in financial reporting done under the rigorous standards of GAAP.

But that’s not the only reason. GAAP-compliant financial statements can reveal details of your company’s financial performance that you and your leadership team may otherwise not notice until a major problem has developed.

Earnings are only the beginning

Let’s begin with the income statement (also known as the profit and loss statement). It provides an overview of revenue, expenses and earnings over a given period.

Many business owners focus only on earnings in the income statement, which is understandable. You presumably went into business to make money. However, though revenue and profit trends are certainly important, they aren’t the only metrics that matter.

For example, high-growth companies may report healthy top and bottom lines but not have enough cash on hand to pay their bills. So, be sure to look beyond your income statement.

A snapshot is just that

The second key part of GAAP-compliant financial statements is the balance sheet (also known as the statement of financial position). It provides a snapshot of your company’s financial health by tallying assets, liabilities and equity.

For instance, intangible assets — such as patents, customer lists and goodwill — can provide significant value to businesses. But internally developed intangibles aren’t reported on the balance sheet. Intangible assets are reported only when they’ve been acquired externally.

Similarly, owners’ equity (or net worth) is the extent to which the book value of assets exceeds liabilities. If liabilities exceed assets, net worth will be negative. However, book value may not necessarily reflect market value. Some companies provide the details of owners’ equity in a separate statement called the statement of retained earnings. It covers sales or repurchases of stock, dividend payments, and changes caused by reported profits or losses.

Ultimately, your balance sheet can tell you a lot about what you’ve got, what you owe and how much equity you truly have in your company. But it doesn’t tell you everything, so it’s important to read the balance sheet in the context of the other two parts of your financial statements.

Cash is (you guessed it) king

The third key part of GAAP-compliant financial statements is the statement of cash flows. True to the name, it shows all the cash flowing in and out of your business. Cash inflows aren’t necessarily limited to sales; they can also include loans and stock sales. Outflows typically result from paying expenses, investing in capital equipment and repaying debt.

Typically, statements of cash flow are organized in three categories: operating, investing and financing activities. The bottom of the statement shows the net change in cash during the period.

Read your statement of cash flows closely as soon it’s available. It’s essentially telling you how much liquidity your business had during the reporting period. A sudden slow down in cash flow can quickly lead to a crisis if you aren’t generating enough cash to pay creditors, vendors and employees.

Detailed picture

In the day-to-day commotion of running a company, it can be easy to think of your financial statements solely as paperwork for the purposes of obtaining loans or other capital infusions. But these documents paint a detailed picture of the financial performance of your business. Use them wisely. For help generating GAAP-compliant financial statements, or just understanding them better, contact your FMD advisor.

© 2024

7 common payroll risks for small to midsize businesses

If your company has been in business for a while, you may not pay much attention to your payroll system so long as it’s running smoothly. But don’t get too complacent. Major payroll errors can pop up unexpectedly — creating huge disruptions costing time and money to fix, and, perhaps worst of all, compromising the trust of your employees.

For these reasons, businesses are well-advised to conduct payroll audits at least once annually to guard against the many risks inherent to payroll management. Here are seven such risks to be aware of:

1. Inaccurate recordkeeping. If you don’t keep detailed and accurate records, it will probably come back to haunt you. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires businesses to maintain records of employees’ earnings for at least three years. Violations of the FLSA can trigger severe penalties. Be sure you and your staff know what records to keep and have sound policies and procedures in place for keeping them.

2. Employee misclassification. Given the widespread use of “gig workers” in today’s economy, companies are at high risk for employee misclassification. This occurs when a business engages independent contractors but, in the view of federal authorities, the company treats them like employees. Violating the applicable rules can leave you owing back taxes and penalties, plus you may have to restore expensive fringe benefits.

3. Manual processes. More than likely, if your business prepares its own payroll, it uses some form of payroll software. That’s good. Today’s products are widely available, relatively inexpensive and generally easy to use. However, some companies — particularly small ones — may still rely on manual processes to record or input critical data. Be careful about this, as it’s a major source of errors. To the extent feasible, automate as much as you can.

4. Privacy violations. You generally can’t manage payroll without data such as Social Security numbers, home addresses, birth dates and bank account numbers. Unfortunately, possessing such information puts you squarely in the sights of hackers and those pernicious purveyors of ransomware. Invest thoroughly in proper cybersecurity measures and regularly update these safeguards.

5. Internal fraud. Occupational (or internal) fraud remains a major threat to businesses. Schemes can range from “cheating” on timesheets by rank-and-file workers to embezzlement by those higher on the organizational chart. Among the most fundamental ways to protect your payroll function from fraud is to require segregation of duties. In other words, one employee, no matter how trusted, should never completely control the process. If you don’t have enough employees to segregate duties, consider outsourcing.

6. Legal compliance. As a business owner, you’re probably not an expert on the latest regulatory payroll developments affecting your industry. That’s OK; laws and regulations are constantly evolving. However, failing to comply with the current rules could cost you money and hurt your company’s reputation. So, be sure to have a trustworthy attorney on speed dial that you can turn to for assistance when necessary.

7. Tax compliance. Employers are responsible for calculating tax withholding on employee wages. In addition to deducting federal payroll tax from paychecks, your organization must contribute its own share of payroll tax. If you get it wrong, the IRS could investigate and potentially assess additional tax liability and penalties.

That’s where we come in. For help conducting a payroll audit, reviewing your payroll costs and, of course, managing your tax obligations, contact your FMD advisor.

© 2024

A general look at generative AI for businesses

If you follow the news, you’ve probably heard a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it’s slowly and steadily expanding into various aspects of our lives. One widely cited example is ChatGPT, an AI “chatbot” that can engage in conversations with users and create coherently written articles, as well as other content, when prompted.

ChatGPT and other similar chatbots are what’s known as “generative” AI. The operative word there refers to software that’s able to generate new content based on input from users and existing data either inputted during development or gathered from the internet.

Along with college students and the curious, more and more businesses are joining the ranks of generative AI users. Research and advisory firm Gartner surveyed more than 1,400 company leaders in September 2023. Two in five (40%) said their organizations were piloting generative AI programs — a substantial increase from the 15% results of the same survey conducted by Gartner about six months earlier.

Imagine the possibilities

Naturally, how companies are using generative AI depends on factors such as industry, mission, operational needs and strategic objectives. But it can be informative to look at a few examples.

In consumer goods and retail, for instance, businesses are using generative AI to create new product designs, optimize materials and align aesthetics with the latest trends. In the energy sector, it’s being used to improve supply chain logistics and better forecast demand. In health care, generative AI is helping accelerate scientific research and enhance medical imaging.

More generally, this technology could help many types of businesses:

• Generate marketing and advertising content,

• Analyze financial data and produce reports that assess risk or draw trendlines, and

• Develop chatbots or other means to automate customer service.

There’s no harm in letting your imagination run wild. Think about what types of content and knowledge AI could create for your company that, in years previous, would’ve probably only been possible to develop by hiring new employees or engaging consultants.

Be methodical

Of course, pondering the possibilities of generative AI should never translate to blindly throwing money at it. To start exploring the possibilities, sit down with your leadership group and discuss the topic.

If you’re wholly new to it, be sure everyone does some preliminary research. You might even ask an IT staffer or someone else knowledgeable about AI to do a presentation. As part of your research and discussion, make sure to learn about the potential legal and public relations liabilities.

Should everyone agree that pursuing generative AI is a good strategic decision, form a project team to identify “use cases” — that is, specific ways your business could use it to deliver practical, competitive functionalities. Prioritize the use cases you come up with and choose a winner to go after first.

You may be able to buy an AI product to fulfill this need. In such a case, you’d have to shop carefully, thoroughly train the appropriate staff members and cautiously roll out the solution. Doing so would be relatively simpler than developing your own AI app, but you’d need to manage the purchase and implementation with return on investment firmly in mind.

The other option is to indeed create your own proprietary generative AI app. This would likely be a much more costly and labor-intensive option, but you’d be able to customize the solution to your ultra-specific needs.

Prepare for the future

What can generative AI do for your business? Maybe a little, maybe a lot. One thing’s for sure, its influence on how business is done will only get stronger in the years ahead. We can help you assess the costs vs. benefits of this or any other technology.

© 2024

Empower your sellers with sales enablement

The driving revenue force of just about every kind of business is sales. But all too often, once a sales team is up and running, it’s left to its own devices to maintain its strengths, develop new skills and upgrade its technology. This can produce mixed results — some sales departments are remarkably self-sufficient while others could really use more organizational support.

To remove the guesswork, many of today’s businesses are investing in sales enablement. This is an enterprise-wide, collaborative and continuous approach to empowering the sales department to do its best work.

Pillars of the concept

Wait a minute, you might say, isn’t sales enablement just another name for sales training? No, not entirely.

Training is certainly a part of the equation. A sales enablement program will involve ongoing training on the latest sales techniques, changes in the marketplace, the company’s latest products or services, and so forth. But this training doesn’t occur haphazardly — it’s regularly scheduled and typically segmented into easily digestible learning modules, generally a more effective approach than overloading sales reps with info on a sales retreat or in sporadic seminars.

There are several other pillars of sales enablement as well. One is content. Under their programs, many companies build a library of materials that features items such as:

• Books and articles on best practices,

• Customer testimonials,

• Product “spec sheets,” slide decks and demos, and

• Reports and spreadsheets with the latest competitive intelligence.

Another key feature of a sales enablement program is coaching. This may involve engaging outside consultants to provide coaching services to sales reps or developing internal mentoring or partnering.

Technology is also central to sales enablement. Most programs involve regular discussions with the leadership team and IT department about what tools could best serve the sales team. Notably, there are multiple software platforms on the market focused on sales enablement that can help businesses set up and manage their programs. Some customer relationship management software offers help in this area, too.

Benefits in the offing

There’s a reason sales enablement has caught on with many different types of companies. There are significant benefits in the offing.

First, a well-designed program can get new hires up to speed much more quickly than a more casual, ad hoc approach to “rookie” training. And for fully onboarded and seasoned employees, sales enablement can save time and effort by providing easy access to the relevant and up-to-date data, content and tools that support their activities. Ultimately, it can boost productivity for the whole team and, thereby, revenue for the business.

Also, the ongoing training and coaching features of sales enablement help sales reps keep their skills sharp and their knowledge growing. The aforementioned learning modules, webinars, podcasts, quizzes and other learning formats may give them an edge over competitors with less educational support.

There’s the engagement factor, too. A sales enablement program communicates to new hires, as well as established reps, that the organization fully supports them. As word gets around, you may attract stronger job candidates and enjoy better employee retention rates.

A major initiative

As the saying goes, nothing worth doing is easy. To implement and run a successful sales enablement program, you’ll need to invest considerable time and resources. And before any of that, you’ll need to set clear, measurable objectives — as well as a reasonable budget. For help with the financial side of planning a major initiative like this, contact us.

© 2024