Those of us who work to manage our cholesterol have received conflicting information about eating eggs. I grew up loving eggs, but then, as an adult, I was told not to eat them due to high cholesterol.
Then the nutrition experts decided you can eat egg whites. Now it is back to eat your eggs – yolk and all – the last time I spoke with a nutritionist. Confusing.
Deciding if you are going to outsource a function within an organization is about as confusing. The trends go back and forth on that issue too. Advances in technology and lower costs of offshore professionals have made the idea of outsourcing more attractive in some cases.
I have some advice, gained over my years as CFO in various organizations, for you to consider while you evaluate the idea of outsourcing financial functions:
Don’t try to fix a broken process by outsourcing it. Do not outsource a recurring, detail-oriented process that is currently broken. Get the best consultant you can afford working to fix the process. Make certain the expert who fixes the process creates a training manual on how the process should run and trains an internal staff person on it. You may discover during this process it is easier for you to keep that process going with your own employees or you may decide you want to outsource the detail part of it to an outside, less costly resource. The bottom line is that if you do not understand your own process, you cannot know if a third party is accurately performing it on your behalf.
Get organized. Organize your data in a way that you can provide it to the outside party prior to engaging them. If you cannot make sense of your data, you can end up paying a third party a lot of money to do it for you.
One of the areas I’ve seen this as an issue is with State Sales Tax. Compliance in this area is about as difficult as hanging upside down from a tall tree branch while flossing your teeth. Companies get frustrated with the complicated process of filing state sales taxes, especially when multiple states, or states with complicated calculations and forms are involved. For example, are you capturing sales revenue based on the billing address or the shipping address? You must have accurate data before outsourcing it for someone else to handle.
My recommendation is to invest in upgrading your IT infrastructure. Regardless of whether you are outsourcing compliance with state sales tax or another process, you must be in a position to produce data in an organized manner that a third party can accept and act on.
When you do decide to outsource a portion of your business, make sure you keep the data and regularly backup the data the outsourced agency is using. Make sure you still know where your information is and how to get to it if the outsourced entity suddenly goes out of business. Perform routine oversight of the work being done by the third party. This is even more important today in this every changing business world.
Just-in Time Experts. Expertise that you need infrequently is a great area to consider outsourcing. Many third parties provide outsourced IT, legal, human resource, or financial expertise to augment internal resources and are less costly than hiring the expertise full time. You may only require specialized expertise for specific projects rather than an on-going need.
Outsourcing these functions is not without its drawbacks. For example, let’s say your obsolete, no-one-has-ever-heard-of information system gets hacked and you have no in-house expert who is familiar with your system. Hiring an expert to support obscure software can be costly and time intensive to get your problem solved.
Or perhaps legal expertise is something you only require occasionally. You decide to download a customer contract from the internet instead of hiring legal expertise to prepare your standard contract. If you get in a nonpayment dispute with one of your major customers and then bring in legal to help you, you may discover that the customer contract you downloaded for free from the internet will not allow you to properly recover the revenue you are due. Now the outside lawyer has to clean up the mess you made by not hiring them on the front end to prepare a sound contract.
My point is that it is essential the right expertise performs the company’s core functions in every business. The laws and regulation in these areas change rapidly and you need someone to help you stay compliant and out of trouble.
Barker Associates provides outsourced Chief Financial Officer services on a fractional or full-time basis in the event of a transition. Fractional services work best during times of fast paced growth, a new system implementation, a merger, or an acquisition. Even with a full time CFO on board, they have a day job and these types of changes require a unique focus and background. Our extensive and diverse background helps guide the organization through the change.
During a transition time, Barker Associates uses their expertise to assist the organization with designing a job description and interviewing candidates for the new position. Once your new CFO, Accountant or other financial professional is onboard, Barker Associates exits until you bring us back for the next big project.
If you are considering outsourcing a financial process within your organization and would like to discuss specific areas of concern, I would love to speak with you. Click here to schedule a 30-minute free consultation to discuss your unique situation.
How would you respond if someone made a legitimate offer for your business? Would you know if the amount is what the market would pay? Even if the offer sounds like more, or less than you imagined, you want to respond from a position of knowledge, not sticker shock.
Valuation is the value an investor would place on your company if you were to seek investment funding. From a negotiating standpoint, it’s better for the prospective buyer to say a number first so you have an indicator of how serious they are. Prepare yourself – arm yourself with the knowledge of a realistic valuation so you can effectively negotiate.
One measure of the value of your business is what someone will pay for it. Enterprise Value is a real number that investors calculate using your historical financial statements to arrive at a multiple of revenue, or EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). Other factors influence the value that could actually be paid for the business.
For example, are you loading your books with personal expenses and other tactics to avoid paying taxes? When investors value your business, such expenses can lower your EBITDA and affect the sale of your company.
On the other hand, EBITDA can be higher when you keep personal and business expenses and bank accounts separate and run your business as a true entrepreneur. Large and small organizations alike are guilty of combining personal and business expenses. C Suite executives in large organizations without governance over their expense account can significantly impact the value of the business by deflating the run rate of profit. Smaller businesses sometimes pay their family members a salary without the family member ever doing any work for the organization. Neither of these examples are proper stewardship over the financial governance of the organization.
Then there is the value that the market will bear. Factors that can influence the actual value paid for your business include how scalable your infrastructure is – the people, processes, and technology. If a new owner wants to focus on growth, is the right infrastructure in place to support that or will the new owner have to invest in infrastructure first? How much debt are you carrying? Someone has to pay off debt when the business changes owners.
On the other hand, your approach to acquiring new capabilities – buy, versus build, versus lease – in some cases can raise the value that the market is willing to pay.
Your role as an entrepreneurial leader can also influence the market value of your business. Employing a strong team who lead and run your company with an eye to the future is much more attractive than a business operating with old, inefficient processes and no new product launches.
My goal with this post is to help you understand the importance of knowing the value of your business. You never know when someone is going to reach out to you with an offer you cannot refuse. Be ready by knowing the valuation of your company so you can speak intelligently – before you get on the emotional roller coaster of discussing a transaction.
I would love to speak with you about your unique situation. I invite you to set up a 30-minute free consultation with me right now by clicking on this link to my calendar – let’s talk!
We have learned many definitions
related to essential in 2020. The interpretation of essential has been heavily
debated, including discussions over golf courses, liquor stores, restaurants,
and bars. As communities open up, these debates are getting more interesting as
the discussions center around who is allowed to be open.
My favorite debate about “essential”
is the one where the attorneys representing Elizabeth Holmes, the Founder and
CEO of Theranos, appealed to the court that they should be considered essential
and allowed to meet at the office to work.
Mindy Barker | Barker AssociatesThe right infrastructure is critical to generate the data about your business during the due diligence process with potential investors.
Pre-COVID, one meaning of “essential” described
having the right infrastructure in place if a company wanted to raise capital. The
right infrastructure is critical to generate the data about your business during
the due diligence process with potential investors.
Here are a few examples of why this is
important:
Revenue projections will be a key
component of what the investor will look at when evaluating the business. The
revenue in the projected income statement for the prior year probably
represents an increase in the revenue over the current year. The investors will
ask questions like: “How long does it take you to close a deal from the time
you speak to a customer to close?” “How many deals do you have in the pipeline
now?” “What is your customer churn rate?” “How do you charge customers – as
SaaS, by transaction?” etc.
These questions will be asked during
the initial discussion as well as during the presentation. Whatever answer you
give, if the due diligence moves forward, must match the data in the general
ledger, CRM (Customer Relationship Manager data base) and other systems.
I have known a C Suite executive
falsely stating things like they have never lost a customer or they close a
deal in 30 days. But when we drilled down on the historical data his statements
are not supported by facts.
I have also experienced a C Suite
Executive who stated that the projections were high because “that is what we
need to close this deal.” False information may get the attention of a
potential investor but it will not keep their attention when they drill down to
the “essential” infrastructure and claims are not backed up by facts.
Burn rate – potential investors will
ask what your burn rate is, i.e. what is the amount of cash the company
requires each month. Burn rate is based on the cash leaving the checking
account – not the pretax income. These are two different calculations and often
commingled into one number for companies. If the C Suite executive states the
monthly burn rate is $10k because that is the best guess he has during an
investor presentation, but the historical cash spend is $15k per month, the
investor will lose trust and the company seeking investment will lose
credibility. Best guess does not get the job done.
“Increasingly,
buyers are looking for infrastructure that can help them identify, track,
measure and report on a broad range of externalities. Being able to demonstrate
actions taken to date, along with a path forward that helps buyers envision how
the company can help address or mitigate global challenges and serve societal
needs, can help them think more expansively about opportunities for creating
value.”
In their article, the E&Y authors
are directing their advice to Private Equity Firms to emphasize the importance of
creating value for portfolio companies the PE may want to sell. The quote above
supports my assertion that adequate infrastructure is essential for
companies seeking investment.
You may say to yourself, I will build
the infrastructure when I am ready to pitch to investors – we are not ready
right now. If you have the ability to influence decisions about company spend,
it is your fiduciary responsibility to insist the company has the right
infrastructure. Not only will it position the company to prepare for the future,
it will guide the entire management team in making the right decisions day to
day.
Let’s dive into your essential infrastructure concerns – click here to set up a 30-minute free consultation to discuss your unique situation.
