2009 Year in Review and Looking to 2010

Over this past year, the opportunity to work with startups and midmarket companies has been a delight, challenge and encouragement to the good workings of innovation and capitalism.  During this time, we have again seen state and federal policy affect the opportunities for business to plan, adapt, adopt and overcome the rapid shifts in monetary policy; banking and the government take over of product markets.  In addition to the greater policy issues that we track to know how to better serve our clients, the items closer to home that matter are understanding financial statements, cash flow, innovation, product development, marketing & sales and most importantly is capital availability.

It is significant to the operational health of an organization that the Board and management have an understanding of financial statements and the relationship of cash flow to sustainability.  During the course of this past year it has become painfully clear that knowing what financial statements mean and how to interpret that information for the purposes of risk management and strategic decision making is not a common skill set among those responsible for organizations.  We have seen the results of this lack of understanding in the public organizational arena and the problem is more systemic in the private small and medium business environment.  With the lack of understanding and knowledge comes the unintended or sometimes purposeful negative manipulation of funds and numbers to make things look better then they may be.  Not only that, if the Board and management are not clear on these subjects then when things start to really look gloomy, desperation may lead to inappropriate activities and use of cash that most likely is not available; hence the financial debacle of the last decade.  We have worked with business leaders to understand these fundamentals so that better decisions can be developed and risks can be mitigated.

I have been participating in a number of discussions regarding innovation.  Often this concept is relegated to technology and products, yet I believe that it has a broader scope into the other functional areas of business including the overall business model.  For some forms of businesses this is more difficult to envision due to regulatory requirements and policies that put the models in boxes.  But for the small and medium businesses, this is the time to look at what makes sense in the existing environment and determine if new opportunities can be derived through innovative thinking and approaches to the business.  We believe in critical thinking that includes cross-organizational participation to bring together the strategic plans that come from innovation.

Marketing and Sales is the lifeblood of any company.  The ability to communicate the differentiating value of the products or services in a competitive environment is what marketing is all about.  The difficult aspect of this for the small and medium business is to understand their competitive environment and set a budget that will produce results through increased sales.  It seems that many organizations still do not have clarity regarding the differentiations between marketing, advertising and sales.  This is an area that we have been able to assist companies in gaining insight and therefore increasing existing customer relations and building new channels to new customers.

The really tough spot for organizations over the last couple years has been access to capital and financing.  We have learned even more this year what the capital markets for startups and mid-stage companies is requiring.  The need to have very well researched and developed business plans is more crucial than any recent time in funding new companies.  Of the several key areas that get the most focus, these two are really zeroed in on:  an understanding of the competitive market and distribution channels.  This goes back to what was mentioned in the last paragraph.  Access to capital requires good efforts by the CEO who needs to get out and sell the value points of the     company to the investors.  With that there needs to be a good management team that develops the information that will build out the financial and business models.  These documents will be needed  in order to seek financing as well.  This may be in the form of a revolving line of credit or other facility.  Although the Federal Government touted that financing to small businesses would be available, the interesting aspect of this is that not much became available and the financial system did not make it easy to gain access to these dollars.

The promises of new loan availability to the small and medium business environment never materialized.  We do not expect it to get any better in 2010.  With this, we are looking at the more critical aspects of how to work with companies to really understand cash flow and cash flow management.  Through much research and study, we believe that companies need to aggressively develop a debt free model with a strong cash flow model.  This is counter to what the treasury and banking systems would have business do.  We are working out the operational methodology of this innovative model and intend to work with organizations in 2010 that will strengthen their cash management strategy and facilitate managed growth.

2010 – Looking forward

We intend to continue to communicate practical and informative business management for the blog entries here.  These will transit the various core activities of doing business and technologies that will best enhance opportunities for business management and market development.  We continue to qualify and quantify the business model that strengthens cash flow and growth strategies.  Our CEO, Tom Niewulis, will continue to discuss real life lessons learned in business, which personalizes that which almost every entrepreneur encounters.  His straightforward and humorous approach brings insights that often come across in a purely academic way from others. 

Our ultimate goal for 2010 is to continue to build great relationships with our clients and build new client relationships by bringing insight and resources to efficiently execute their strategy, to assist in the development of new strategies, to facilitate greater understanding of financial and business models and to assess technologies from an their end user perspective.  We look forward to the opportunities for everyone to excel in 2010.

Today’s Technology – Tomorrow’s Work Environment

The 20th century had the exponential growth in technology.  Not just in one particular technology sector but also across many that are considered core to the building of an industrial information society.  The silicon explosion in the 1960’s has been the impetus for the greatest knowledge exchange ever seen in the history of mankind.  I can remember during those early years how the Bell Company wanted to introduce the future with the video telephone but television hadn’t even gone to color and Judy Jetsons would try as hard as she may to not get caught on the TV phone with no makeup.

It seems like a 5,000-year leap in just four decades of technology enhancements when we learn of another mega buyout by Cisco, formally a technology innovator.  The target was Tanberg, the Norwegian based and global video conferencing leader.  In my opinion, Cisco has done fabulous over the years acquiring its competition to move the information society into network ubiquity.  This does not mean that it makes their products any better but it does increase the oomph of their marketing machine.  OK, I have to catch myself regarding my attitude about this successful mega marketing machine.

The real and simple point is that many more businesses are having a distributed workforce.  In doing so, they are looking to the economics of what telepresence might bring to growth as well as cost savings.  I looked at the ROI of Telepresence in the SMB environment in my August Ezine article.  The essence of what a business does regarding any strategic move should take into consideration how it will affect the whole organization.  Making technology decisions always affects the cost of business and not necessarily in the manner expected.  What about the cost in developing a culture that incorporates a technology?  This requires the understanding of all that the business work environment is and what strategy the implementation will take.  Often the people cost is not considered in the technology cost.

Several questions to consider in gaining an understanding of how telepresence will be assimilated by the whole Living Entity, the business, should be:
• Will management use the technology to better communicate within the company?
• Will more collaboration be gained across the whole work environment?
• Will outside influencers such as customers be able to easily become accustomed to the new technology introduction?
• Will the technology move to the desktop or is it still going to be used at the conference room level?

The good news is that since 1963 when the Jetsons were getting caught in embarrassing moments on the TV phone at home or in the office, real work is being accomplished today in HD down to the desktop.  The new collaborative work environment that is developing through the technology of telepresence will see more cost effective opportunities for branch offices and distributed telecommuters.   Keeping the business culture intact while developing a new working environment is the 21st century challenge.