Stop Searching for 'The Next Big Thing:' Tips for Building the Best Business for You

As driven as you might be to launch the next Google, Apple or Facebook, the process of identifying a great idea can be intimidating. Many would-be entrepreneurs become so concerned with creating “The Next Big Thing” that they become paralyzed and can’t progress.

That’s obviously not a good predicament. Here are five steps for seeing past your thirst for greatness, and instead simply building a great product and company:

1. Recognize your skills. The avenues to internet success inspire many young entrepreneurs. Few of these individuals are focused on the “big idea,” however. They’re interested in how they can use their knowledge and skills to build a viable business.

Are you a programmer with creativity to spare? A skilled marketer? Identify your strengths and aptitude level for diving into the necessary marketing -- and possible fundraising -- needed to launch. Once you assess your skills, you can begin to think about what your “big idea” is and work toward it.

2. Identify an opportunity. While some businesses may launch with an idea that’s revolutionary, many globally-recognized entrepreneurs achieved success by simply identifying a solution to a problem. It might not sound as glamorous as the lightning rod of inspiration, but a viable solution to a common obstacle is the basis for targeting an audience. How can your insight or technology skills improve others’ lives or make tasks more efficient?

3. Analyze the market. Your road to success might be built on improving upon something that already exists. Examine your market and any similar ventures you can learn from to help shape your business. Just consider the example of Facebook. The social network was created after MySpace, and, before that, Friendster already existed. We all know how the story ends, but it’s worth mentioning that Facebook’s contributions, though seemingly small by comparison, served as a spring board for the company’s ascent.

Continue Reading... 

How to Take Advantage of an Economic Upswing

No matter what business you're in, it's prudent to be ready to take advantage of any foreseeable economic improvement.

Invest in your employees again

One solid place to begin may have received short shrift in a sour business climate -- employee training. If that's so, think about retooling your employees' skills so they can handle an increasing and possibly more diverse workload.

"Be willing to invest in employee hiring and training," says Joel Gross, CEO of Coalition Technologies, a West Coast-based design and marketing firm. "When any increase in business comes, you may want to have cross-trained employees who can fulfill multiple functions and tasks."

Further, if hiring new employees seems likely, it may be wise to jump on that task as soon as possible. As unemployment drops and more companies look to build employee rolls, the most talented people may not be available for long. Prioritizing any planned hires for early in the year can help shove you to the front of the line.

Give some thought to optimal positioning of employees, both existing and new. Mary Hladio, president of Ember Carriers, a Cincinnati organizational performance firm, says it's critical to balance current decision-making with long-term planning to fully leverage economic growth. "Small and midsized businesses need to identify and develop key employees into a leadership team that can run the day-to-day operations of the company, make tactical decisions and free the business owner to focus on long-term growth and sustainability," Hladio says.

Prepare for growth across the board

Next, review your company website -- another part of your business that may have been put on the back burner. In particular, check to see if your website is equipped not merely to be easy to use and navigate, but also to smoothly handle any increase in traffic levels. 

Read the rest here...

Five steps for a successful business turnaround

I have taken part in many business turnarounds in my career, and time and again noticed the same problems, regardless of whether the reason for the turnaround was a relatively minor situation or a reorganization after bankruptcy. Here are the five steps that need to happen during any major business adjustment and some of the pitfalls to avoid along the way. While this article will focus on sales teams, these steps are of a universal nature and will apply to most departments within a company.

1. Assessing the Situation

Before a successful business turnaround can be implemented, it is crucial to understand what got the company where it is now. When businesses fail, it is most often due to ineffective management. Since management is usually the problem, it is difficult to use current management insight to determine what change is needed. As outside consultants, we often hear from ineffective management teams that they need greater funding to correct the sagging business, but we know that throwing money at a problem does not work. The people who created the problem in the first place will not know how to fix it. Providing them greater resources is a mistake: it wastes money and degrades employee morale. Also, failing businesses most often do not have good metrics in use to manage and guide the business. Metrics should not only tell company leaders where they have been but should also be used to gauge future performance. Management should be able to clearly describe how the metrics it uses will predict future results.

Providing that the company’s products or services are competitive, the issues affecting the performance of a sales team can range from an ineffective sales process to low morale, which is caused by any number of factors.

Continue Reading...

12 Month Strategic Plan for Restructuring Your Business

Whether you are restructuring a failing business, restructuring to support expansion into a new revenue stream or restructuring to create an opportunity to pass the business on to a family member or sell it, you should have started months ago. Change takes time, and the restructuring process includes many levels of endeavor. Unprepared, a restructuring process can take as long as five years. If it must be completed within a 12-month period, the best approach is to set quarterly tasks that include research, decision making, implementation and review.

Preliminary Research

The most important part of restructuring lies in defining the problem and postulating the solution. Allocate the entire first quarter to this task. It requires a careful study of all company processes and a comparison with industry norms. Study relationships with customers, their product acceptance and expectations of benefits from your restructuring. Examine employee expectations and potential for damage to morale. Review all supplier and customer contracts, revenue performance, expenses and liabilities, including responsibilities to investors. This is a lengthy process and may take as long as six months.

Decision Making

You can start forming decisions during your research phase because it will reveal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats throughout your enterprise. It may also affect your understanding of the problems you seek to solve as well as change your postulated solutions. By the end of the second quarter, your major decisions should have been made and your plan should be ready for implementation. Involving all levels of the company and outside stakeholders in your research and planning process will speed decisions and result in easier implementation.

Implementation

Implementation is the process of managing problems that arise. It involves selling the idea to all stakeholders, which include employees as well as investors, suppliers and customers. 

Read the rest here...

Restructuring Your Small Business With Cloud Technology

Cloud Technology has fast become the perfect fit for many small businesses. By virtue of computer resources shared over a network, the cloud has opened up the door to more efficient and cost effective ways for the small business owner to effectively manage business processes, cut costs and streamline their business structure. By moving all or part of your key resources into the cloud, more time and money is available to invest in your company’s growth.

The “Green” Aspect of Cloud Computing

With less hardware to buy and fewer applications taking up local resources, many businesses utilizing the cloud produce up to 65% less carbon than comparative businesses using similar data centers in-house. In addition, asset disposal is no longer an issue when equipment would normally end its usefulness. By initiating some simple procedures, even such things as paper waste can be reduced in the cloud.

Business Applications and the Cloud

For the small business owner, the cloud is a pool of computing resources accessed through the internet that you don’t have to set up or support. Running your business applications on these multi-tenant platforms means you could literally limit your in-house network to a few mobile devices. They also minimize the costs of hardware and the subscriptions for your business application are less expensive than purchasing multiple licenses for desktop software.

Even as the selection of online business applications continues to expand rapidly, many of the programs needed by the average small business owner are already available. Accounting applications that manage payables, receivables, billing and payroll are available now in subscription and pay-per-use formats. In today’s mobile-centric business world even budget planning, forecasting, sales management and marketing can all be done in the cloud.

Embracing the Mobile Market 

What Happens to Money Owed in a Business Restructuring Plan?

Reorganization Plan

After filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case a business has 120 days to create and file a voluntary reorganization plan and provide disclosure statements to creditors. Creditors evaluate, approve or reject the plan. The bankruptcy court confirms or rejects the plan. The reorganization plan allows the business to pay portions of debts, discharge some debts, terminate contracts and recover assets. The plan details the process for the business to adjust operations, reduce debt and return to profitable operations. Small business cases are handled differently than bankruptcy cases for larger business, including additional court oversight and attention to the reorganization plan and business operations.

Confirmed Plans

Confirmed reorganization plans are legally binding for creditors and the debtor that has filed bankruptcy. A confirmed plan discharges debt that existed before the confirmation date. The plan classifies debtors as secured creditors, equity security holders and general or prioritized unsecured creditors. The plan includes a detailed payment plan for repayment of debts and, if approved, liquidation of assets. Reorganization plans may be adjusted or replaced with new plans after voting by creditors and approval of the bankruptcy court. The business must adhere to payment schedules in the reorganization plan.

Pre-petition Debts

Bankruptcy law prohibits businesses in Chapter 11 reorganization to pay for services or goods the business received before the filing date for the bankruptcy case. Pre-petition invoices cannot be paid until the court approves a reorganization plan. Post-petition invoices for purchases made after the filing of the bankruptcy are paid normally and receive priority over pre-petition debts. The reorganization plan details how much of pre-petition debts are paid and when the debts are paid.

Non-discharged Debts

Bankruptcy does not allow the discharge of some of the business’ debts, including certain taxes, child support, alimony, government-guaranteed education funds, some orders for restitution and debts stemming from personal and property damage of a malicious nature or involving intoxication. 

Find More...

Achieving a Successful Business Turnaround

Business turnaround is about reversing a business’s decline, restoring it to stability and then re-growing its value. But business turnarounds are about healing the sick, not attempting to raise the dead.

So, to achieve a turnaround, you will generally need to have the following seven things present:

1.A viable business: Some core business that has future potential growth and profitability around which the business can be rebuilt.

2.Time: Real turnarounds take time and if they are not started early enough, they will either fail or require protection through an appropriate insolvency procedure.

3.Cash: Turnarounds need money, often there are costs associated with the initial restructuring  and then to finance the future regrowth of the business, and this money must be found either from within the business (‘bootstrapping’), or from outside by way of new investment or refinancing.

4.Vision: A clear goal to which the business is to be directed, to provide both a target and motivation.

5.Management: Who have both the will to achieve the turnaround (it’s your plan and vision) and also the skills (functional and situational) to make it happen, or access to external resources who can provide these skills when required.

6.Stakeholder support: Management cannot do it all by themselves. They also need to take suppliers, customers, staff, bankers, shareholders, and other stakeholders with them.

7.Confidence in the process: The stakeholders need to see how management (who will be regarded as having got us into this mess) are going to get us out again, and this has to entail a structured approach in dealing with the problem.

Turnarounds tend to divide into three key phases and while each phase needs to consider finance, people and marketing issues, there is definitely a shift in priorities over time from finance to marketing.

Continue Reading...

Business Restructuring! Do You Know When it is Time?

A restructuring, is it time? Tick, tick, tick, the clock is ticking. In less than a week payroll is due. The company does not have enough cash to pay the 200 employees and you are not even thinking about how to pay the suppliers. The credit line is fully drawn and you have no more collateral to give. What do you do? How much time does the company have? These are the type of issues the company is facing. Is it time for a business restructuring?

If you cannot meet payroll, staff will leave, the state will be notified that the employees have not been paid, and this will be only the beginning of the company’s problems.  You know that if the company does not meet payroll, the game, known as the business, is over. And this is the only the start of the problem. For a privately owned business, personally guaranteed company obligations will default, and the personal assets of the owners will be seized.

This is not so much of an extreme case. This scenario often happens. So thinking about the company from the perspective of how to avoid or change the situation is critical.  A business restructuring may be needed and now!

Business difficulties can happen quickly and for many reasons. Businesses may suffer from lost market expectations, reduced operating earnings, or severe cash flow troubles. Whether triggered by marketplace forces or internal dynamics, an early assessment and quick decisive moves will be needed to reinvigorate earnings and company value (PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, 2012). This is when you know that a business restructuring must commence.

Please Visit...

The Five Essential Steps of a Successful Business Turnaround

I have taken part in many business turnarounds in my career, and time and again noticed the same problems, regardless of whether the reason for the turnaround was a relatively minor situation or a reorganization after bankruptcy. Here are the five steps that need to happen during any major business adjustment and some of the pitfalls to avoid along the way. While this article will focus on sales teams, these steps are of a universal nature and will apply to most departments within a company.

1. Assessing the Situation

Before a successful business turnaround can be implemented, it is crucial to understand what got the company where it is now. When businesses fail, it is most often due to ineffective management. Since management is usually the problem, it is difficult to use current management insight to determine what change is needed. As outside consultants, we often hear from ineffective management teams that they need greater funding to correct the sagging business, but we know that throwing money at a problem does not work. The people who created the problem in the first place will not know how to fix it. Providing them greater resources is a mistake: it wastes money and degrades employee morale. Also, failing businesses most often do not have good metrics in use to manage and guide the business. Metrics should not only tell company leaders where they have been but should also be used to gauge future performance. Management should be able to clearly describe how the metrics it uses will predict future results.

Providing that the company’s products or services are competitive, the issues affecting the performance of a sales team can range from an ineffective sales process to low morale, which is caused by any number of factors.

Read More...