Here at Milestone Advisors we truly do it all, number crunching and market analysis to create financial models, we fulfill leadership roles such as part time CFO duties, we create plans and help businesses in the execution as well as tracking the results. Whatever the Indianapolis business community needs, we work to deliver customized solutions.
One of our favorite projects to help clients with is building a strategic plan. Why, you ask? The strategic plan is truly the defining blueprint for the future of any endeavor and we love seeing great ideas come to life as they're mapped out in realistic terms. It's all about clarity. How do we get there?
- We conduct high-level analysis of external elements such as your Industry and Competition.
- We also analyze:
- Core competencies
- Mission, Vision, and Values of your organization
- Business objectives
- Major goals
- Key strategies
Once this 'self-reflection' is completed, an approach to business that is 100% original to you, your vision and company is developed along with actionable steps and plans to put it into place and start generating revenue.
Have you noticed that sometimes it is easier to focus on the "doing" versus the "achieving?"
I think The Arbinger Institute said it best; Busyness is a focus on "doing." There are few people more "busy" than people who fail to focus on results.
As I work with businesses to fill a part-time "C" level executive position, I am amazed at how "busy" people can make themselves. As Milestone Advisors becomes part of the senior management team, we find that after the first few months we can be highly effective at achieving the needed results for the company in a part-time capacity. In fact, I see greater operational efficiency because our focus is on the achieving and not creating work. As you look at your current business strategy, consider talking with Milestone Advisors to explore ways we can help you be busy accomplishing.
Local, Indianapolis blogging software company (and Milestone Advisors' client)
Compendium Blogware has
announced growth of 160 percent for 2009. We have two words. Wow. And congratulations!
Over the past year, Compendium has added 217 new clients, placing their total client count in the 400s. This of course translates into more great news, jobs! To support all of the growth and expansion, Compendium also plans on hiring 50 new employees.
What a fantastic example of one person having a great idea, marrying that with time, effort, funding as well as strategic planning and experiences great success.
Milestone Advisors has been working with the senior team at Compendium for two years, providing CFO insight and leadership as needed.
We commend Compendium for their business savvy, relationship building and marketing communication strategy that have vaulted them to the top of their industry. Enjoy your win guys and know there is much more to come.
We're always emphasizing how important it is to have strategies in place to guide every tactical decision you make as you operate your business or company on a day to day basis. While we offer accounting services, organization assessments, part time CFO and part time CIO help, at the end of the day, Milestone Advisors is all about STRATEGY.
A thoughtful approach that addresses multiple aspects and seeks to achieve a goal makes your operations stronger and more prepared to handle anything that may come your way (whether that be anticipated or completely unseen).
That being said, take a look at this
piece that identifies using a revamped marketing strategy as a way to stay strong when the economy falters.
"The key to competing strong in a weak economy is to remain visible and project an image of strength and stability. Customers have a heightened sensitivity to any sign of weakness, so resist the urge to dramatically reduce your marketing activities. To flourish in challenging times, you'll need to distill your marketing and public relations efforts into a powerful, concentrated mix that delivers a high level of visibility and impact on a limited budget."
Wise words. If you need help retooling and refocusing your efforts, I think you know where we'd direct you.
We wish to congratulate ImmuneWorks, Inc., a long-time client of Milestone Advisors, on the announcement of its Development Agreement with Lung Rx, a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Therapeutics Corporation, to pursue development of ImmuneWorks' lead compound (IW001) for the treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a progressive, usually fatal disease that afflicts in excess of 100,000 persons in the United States alone.
Founded in 2006, ImmuneWorks, Inc. is a biotechnology company committed to developing safe and effective immune tolerance treatments for patients with serious autoimmune diseases. Milestone Advisors has had the privilege of providing Part-Time CFO and Part-Time Controller services to ImmuneWorks. Congrats!
Click here to see the full story.
The reality is that fraud does exist in today's business environment, with potentially devastating effects. Uncovering and unwinding fraudulent activities in a company's financial accounting department can be very difficult and many times the business owner will not recoup their losses. How can a small business owner prevent and/or detect fraud? How can fraud be prevented in circumstances where one person is responsible for the finances? How can a business owner safeguard the company's assets?
There are a few steps that business owners can take to reduce the risk of fraud:
- Lock your valuables such as check stock, cash, signature stamps, and physical inventory.
- Segregate accounting duties such as check writing and signing, receiving and counting inventory, and depositing checks and reconciling the bank statements. If this isn't possible with your current staff, you might consider a part-time cfo, controller or bookkeeper to segregate the duties.
- Review third party back-up when authorizing transactions, such as reviewing original invoices before signing accounts payable checks.
- Perform background checks and/or check references on all employees and prepare performance reviews to monitor the employees activities.
Unfortunately fraud will always exist in the business world, but with the right business strategy the risk of fraud can be greatly reduced.
Here at Milestone Advisors, our Indianapolis consulting firm, it is one of our firm beliefs that anyone in the working world should have basic understanding of economics. If you're a business owner, leader or even a part time CFO, grasping economics is essential to understanding how we consume goods and, distribute wealth and build/use resources. If one is not familiar with the basic concepts and theories, they are not fully informed to make crucial decisions to grow a business.
We love this video created by George Mason University economist Russ Roberts, '
Fear the Boom and Bust'. It might aid in your understanding of Hayek versus Keynes theories and how they affect our markets today.
Understanding the basic concepts that drive the way we spend as a nation and how that trend then relates to everything else will enhance your business strategy and position you to navigate unseen variations in the market and still remain profitable.
Everybody is asking these days, "How can I get my customers to pay quicker in this economy?" Here are some things that some Indianapolis companies are doing with the accounting advice from Milestone Advisors' part-time bookeepers and part-time controllers:
1. Email invoices rather than mailing them. (You'll get the added benefits of lower administrative costs and becoming green!)
2. Offer discounts for Accounts Receivable over 60 days with an immediate payment.
3. Implement new policies that all invoices less than a certain dollar amount are to be paid immediately via credit card.
These are just some changes that can help your company's cash position that can be implemented quickly.
I often get asked why a part-time CFO or part-time Controller makes sense for an entrepreneurial company. The answer is simple, you get the expertise you need at a fraction of the cost. Most small businesses have many of the same needs to that of a large business when it comes to the finance and accounting function. The biggest difference is that they don’t need it on a full time basis (with a hefty salary and benefits).
At some point in the evolution of a small business, the business owner reaches the decision that he or she needs to get more from the accounting or finance function. Maybe they are feeling like they need better reporting / instrumentation. They may also be feeling the need to prepare financial projections to help them better plan for the future and understand the cash requirements of the business. Maybe it is as simple as feeling the need to prepare a week-to-week cash flow plan that they can follow when cash is tight. It is at this point that I see many small business owners make a classic mistake – they hire a full time person. While the needs are real, the job itself often does not require a full time person. I would suggest that business owners consider the idea of a part-time Controller or part-time CFO to fill the void. By bringing in finance / accounting experts on a fractional basis, a business owner is able to cover the entire spectrum of needs for the business in a much more cost effective manner.
Running a business is hard. Developing an original idea and building an organization upon it requires passion, dedication, time and creativity. Not only that, those four intangibles must flow forward continuously, providing you with a steady stream of inspiration and motivation. This doesn't leave a lot of time for all the additional nuts and bolts of running a company including hiring, firing and communicating with employees, managing vendor relationships and (many entrepreneurs least favorite task) balancing the books and projecting future growth.
Odds are, you don't have time handle all your company's finances. Maybe you have time to cut checks and perform a daily assessment of your bank account. Maybe you have time for more than that. The bottom line remains, more often than not, entrepreneurs are idea people, not numbers people.
Even if they do enjoy calculations and percentages, odds are they don't have the level of expertise that will allow them to compare their company to current market research and trends, build a sustainable financial model and project for the future (creating reports that enable you to make decisions that will ultimately allow your company to grow).
Many startups and small businesses can benefit from using the services and expertise of a part-time CFO. They can provide you with important information and advice to aid in decision making that leads to growth, avoid numerous business accounting pitfalls and aid in problem solving efforts positioning your operations for as much success as possible.
I was approached recently by the CEO of an upstart software as a service company to consider helping his company develop a corporate finance strategy and raise the requisite capital. We talked at length about the application that the company had built, the customer base, the channels that the company sold through, and the market opportunity. We also talked about some of the obstacles that the company faced in order to be successful.
It appeared to me on first blush, that while the product was a great solution, the "problem" wasn't painful enough to the prospective customers to cause them to beat a path to the new application or even make the purchase if proactively presented with the solution. But that was only my first reaction and I've been wrong before. We needed to dig a little deeper.
I offered to review the business plan and bring in our part time CIO to help assess the technology and the opportunity. But before we had received the information for our discovery process, we received an interesting call from the CEO.
The company had decided to put everything on hold. Everything. The board had met over the weekend and decided that it would take too long to pull together the necessary funding to continue the next phase of the product development plan. The other option would be to attempt to grow the business organically but they didn't feel that could be done successfully either.
What initially appeared as an incredibly large target market was actually not nearly as large as thought. The challenge? The pain factor, or lack thereof, that I mentioned before. I was afraid of that...
It's difficult for early stage or startup companies to consider spending time or money on market research - largely because both resources are so scarce. The other concerns are that asking prospects for feedback and input could "let the cat out of the bag" too early, cause challenges with meeting deliverables, create competitors, or put intellectual property at risk.
All of these concerns are legitimate and should be addressed and treated with caution. However, the risk of spending time in production or development ahead of completing a thorough market research process can cause greater problems down the road.
If you have a great idea that you are considering turning into a product or business, work with an individual or firm that can provide you with the market research services to support business plans for small business. You'll be glad you did and you'll be better positioned as a result.
Do you cringe when the time rolls around to deal with your company's numbers? Do you have a vague or general understanding of terms like accounts receivable and payable, inventory and equity but if you needed to pull together a comprehensive analysis of all of them combined you might be lost?
Many managers and entrepreneurs who run their own businesses face this issue - an overall deficiency in basic financial knowledge that prevents them from fully contributing to any discussion that takes on a financial tone or deals with financial strategy.
It may be a good idea to try and increase your financial literacy - taking a course in corporate finance or asking someone who you trust and may be more financially savvy to mentor you. Another idea is to find others within the organization who may need to build the same skills, you may be able make taking a class a company-wide event (it won't hurt for everyone within your company to have a working understanding of these concepts).
The other option is to bring in someone who can offer that C-level expertise as a CFO. Renting a CFO can allow you to benefit from someone else's years of experience dealing with corporate finance, bank funding, financial forecasting and finance models - without the large price tag of hiring a full time executive.
Regardless of the solution you opt for, it's important to boost your financial IQ or bring someone else aboard who can help you do so.
I realize it's after Thanksgiving but I have always viewed the entire holiday season as a time to give thanks. It's the only time of year we make travel arrangements and put our every day lives on hold to spend a significant block of time with the people we grew up with, the people who have helped us shape our characters. For some reason, when we around these people it causes us to reflect. Maybe it's because spending time with them reminds us of our past, our roots and we naturally compare or contrast that to who we have become and the lives we have created for ourselves in the new place we call home, the people we are during the 9-5 work week. The holidays are a wonderful time because they bring us all together and coming together with these key people in our lives causes self reflection.
Well, it's not quite Christmas but a little past Thanksgiving and I have been doing some self reflection, comparing the person and professional I had hoped to be, thinking about business and our country's economy.
I think there is a lot to be thankful for, I have landed at a company staffed with intelligent people whose driving mantra is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs help themselves. Milestone Advisors seeks to assist those who may lack in specific areas of expertise by providing them with an opinion backed by years of C-level experience without the high salary of employing someone at that level. Our purpose is to serve the small business community in any are where they may require strategy beyond their experience including part time CFO service, help with accounting, marketing strategy or even a technology plan/architecture.
There is nowhere I would rather be than with a firm whose work bolsters the local small business and economy, in turn, doing their part to contribute to our nation's economic recovery. Much of which will rely on small businesses and innovation to create new markets, products and to support them, new jobs. I am grateful to be a part of Milestone Advisors, to be a part of helping people realize their ideas, form companies and experience success with their operations.
Now is the ideal time to look back as a small business owner and see how far you've come. Does your current vision still match up with what you now work towards? Have you achieved what you thought possible by this time? Has anything changed in your approach? Do you need to revisit your strategic plans and make adjustments for the coming year? Take some time to think about your vision for your company and compare it to what has become reality. And don't forget to take some time for a bite of pie and to take in some classic lines from It's A Wonderful Life.
Happy Holidays.
Duane Draughon's military experience trained him to be loyal, under any and all circumstances, to his original mission. And in a recent
article in Fortune Small Business, he claims that training is the only reason his small business has survived.
Draughon's story is one of quick success and then a series of unfortunate events that crippled his business and caused his net worth to plummet. First Draughon's business partner made an unanticipated exit from the company, a devastating loss as he was one of company's best sales people and also served as a crew chief (Draughon's company builds patios). This also meant all the day-to-day responsibilities of running the business fell on one person's shoulders, the result? Draughon began to mismanage costs for the company and before he knew it, he and the company were broke.
Duane's position is one that thousands of entrepreneurs have found themselves in. Just by its very nature, starting a business or running a small company involves massive amounts of risk. Unexpected issues constantly rear their heads whether that be disagreements with business partners, malfunctions with product production, legislation interfering with operations or turmoil in financial markets.
A part time CFO would have helped Draughon a great deal. Being able to sit down with someone who has knowledge of the financial markets as well as the background to offer accounting advice would have helped furnish Duane with the perspective and financial expertise he needed to still manage the business well.
Eventually, Draughon did meet with a management consultant and a financial expert to assess where his company stood and create a business strategy to move it forward. Outside help boasts expertise the business owner may not have as well as an impartial third party who isn't emotional about the success or failure of the venture. Both of those aspects make business consultants a great option when seeking a way out of a sticky situation.
When serving as a part-time CFO for early stage companies, you are constantly looking forward, building business plans and financial models, and trying to determine the best way to provide working capital for the businesses. That job has become increasingly more difficult with the tightening credit standards at that banks and the uneasiness that most owners have about borrowing money.
This week's
Indianapolis Business Journal has a great article in it, "Learning from '70's stagflation." It features several quotes from Andy Paine, former CEO of Indiana National Bank, who was part of the leadership team at the bank during the stagflation era. Here's an excerpt from the article.
[T]he stagflation era holds lessons for modern business and investors. Now, as then, highly leveraged companies struggled, while their debtless competitors enjoyed a huge market advantage. In both eras, successful companies kept their inventories low and stretched accounts payable and receivable as far apart as possible.
Paine remembers Indiana National concentrating on two concepts to “right the ship.” The bank dedicated itself to constant measurement of progress, moving to formal strategic plans for the first time. It also emphasized innovation by developing such new products as specialized loans collateralized on a company’s cash flow.
Some of the products weren’t especially profitable, but they helped keep customers afloat during troubled times—and cemented relationships that paid huge dividends in later years.
Bottom line, Paine said, is that stagflation taught Indiana National to recognize the signs of the times and how to restructure its business around them.
“You had to do business in a different way. You had to change,” Paine said. “The saddest thing is, we [always] really have a hard time learning, a hard time changing, even though we need to change.”
Indiana National not only recognized the signs and restructured their business, they did so and thrived. Are you recognizing the changes required in your business? Following the example of Indiana National, now is a great time to formalize your strategic plan and emphasize innovation to set your company far ahead of your competitors.
Startup and early stage companies have often used the services of a part-time CFO. In fact, our Indianapolis consulting firm has been providing these services to entrepreneurial companies for over six years. We were recently contacted, however, by the
Wall Street Journal to discuss whether using part-time CFO's was a growing trend not just with early-stage companies but also with companies who would have traditionally had a full-time CFO. Here are some excerpts from the article that they ran today:
Some small-business owners in need of accounting help to balance their books and guide them out of a financial black hole are renting CFOs rather than hiring them. The strategy comes at a time when the deep recession has forced small companies to look for money-saving alternatives that can yield good returns yet avoid substantial overhead costs.
"They're looking for ways to streamline and be efficient as they can," says Glenn Dunlap, a co-founder of Milestone Advisors LLC, a small-business consulting firm in Indianapolis that provides CFO services.
The average annual salary for a full-time CFO in a small- to medium-size businesses ranges from $94,250 to $175,750, according to a 2009 Salary Guide by Robert Half International Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., staffing services firm that serves the accounting and finance fields. Renting one can be significantly cheaper.
Entrepreneur Bob Compton, founder and chief executive of Vontoo Inc., an Indianapolis-based voice-messaging company, says he has rented CFOs for six companies he has started or been a lead investor in. "To hire a CFO in the early-going is a waste of money," Mr. Compton says. "It's much better to invest that money in engineers and sales people."
For Vontoo, he pays $5,000 a month for the CFO's strategic advice, bookkeeping services and accounting expertise. "It's a tremendous cost-saving," he says.
Click here to read the full article or follow the links to our webpage to learn more about how Milestone's business consultants can complement your management team in all aspects of your business.
When discussing the start-up of a new restaurant and bar with one of my clients, he said to me, "My biggest challenge is that from the minute I open the doors I have to start figuring out who's stealing from me." We might pass that off as typical for a "cash" business where employees have open access to the company coffers. But what about other non-cash businesses? Do they have the same concerns? What about your business? Are you susceptible to theft or fraud?
The
Indianapolis Business Journal recently ran an article highlighting one company's misfortune. It's a story about the Dodson Group whose CFO plead guilty to over $422,000 of fraudulant charges and wire transfers. Here are some excerpts from the article:
There’s never a good time to learn your company’s been the victim of fraud. But in the recession, experts say stories like Dodson’s are becoming increasingly common. And small organizations are most likely to be victims, since their financial responsibilities are handled by just a few people, or even a single person.
“In these economic times, hours are cut, people are laid off. People feel discouraged and some of the key people who provided management controls are gone,” said Greg Wright, a certified fraud examiner with locally based private investigation firm Jack Sandlin and Associates.
“Safeguards are gone as companies shrink in the recession. People are pressed into a corner, and they do things they normally wouldn’t do. These are times employers should be particularly wary of potential fraud.”
The risks aren’t just financial. Particularly for smaller organizations, fraud can redefine an organization’s public image, scarring its reputation. The stain of stinging headlines is sometimes all anybody remembers.
“When one person controls all sides of a transaction, it becomes very, very easy for that person to become a fraudster,” Marks said. “It’s the old adage, trust but verify.”
At Milestone, we discuss these risks with our clients quite frequently. Without the appropriate segregation of duties, the companies are leaving themselves open to possible theft and fraud. The cost of a solution doesn't have to be another full-time employee. The solution could be found in a part time CFO, controller or bookkeeper who can provide complimentary accounting services to those already being provided to the company.
If you are concerned about the possible exposure of your firm, contact any of our Indianapolis business advisors for a free risk analysis and a discussion about how our management accountants can provide you with the peace of mind that you deserve.
The August 24th edition of the
Indianapolis Business Journal featured Milestone Advisors' client, My Health Care Manager.
The company's CEO, Alan Stanford (pictured here), began working with Milestone three years ago when planning the start-up of the new business.
My Health Care Manager helps older adults achieve better management and control of their total health care, longer independence and greater peace of mind for themselves and their loved ones.
Here's an excerpt of the article about their recent success:
Indianapolis-based startup
My Health Care Manager has signed an agreement with Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. that will eventually put My Health Care Manager’s elder care service in front of the health insurer’s thousands of employer clients and their workers around the country.
It’s a coup for My Health Care Manager, which has only about 500 individual customers now. But in September and October, WellPoint salespeople will pitch My Health Care Manager’s service to employers around Indiana.
Late this year or maybe next, WellPoint will talk up the service around the Midwest. Eventually, the company plans to roll it out in all 14 states where it operates.
“We now have a way to get to the market,” said Alan Stanford, founder and CEO of My Health Care Manager. He added that he will now pitch his service to Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans that WellPoint does not own.
“It just gives our company credibility as an established company very quickly,” he said of the WellPoint deal.
My Health Care Manager has annual revenue of less than $1 million now. But within a year, Stanford expects sales to near $10 million.
“We’re past the development phase and now we’re in the scaling phase,” Stanford said. “We have the potential to be a very large business.”
Milestone is proud to have worked with Alan Stanford and My Health Care Manager to develop their financial projections and business plan in their formative stages and to continue to provide them with part-time CFO, controllership and accounting services. Congratulations to Alan and his team. We wish you much success!!
Six years ago on August 1, 2003 Tom Gabbert and I founded an Indianapolis consulting firm based on a growing need we had identified in our business community – many small businesses and start-ups we had come across were in need of expertise but didn’t have the necessary resources to gain access to this essential, but seemingly elusive knowledge.
The bottom line is that many small businesses and start-ups haven’t assembled the senior management team to navigate through the business’ early stages. In many cases, they don’t need a full time C-level executive. Instead, the companies need access to strategic level advisors who can help organize the business and keep it moving in the right directions.
We thought, “why not fill in these gaps for entrepreneurs by providing a service to meet their needs, regardless of what stage they happen to be at?” And with that idea, Milestone Advisors was born.
Today, our original two-man operation now includes a third partner, Jeff Good, has grown to 25 employees and has helped over 350 Indiana companies meet their goals, deal with obstacles and most importantly, grow. Originally opened and billed as a ‘Rent-a-CFO’ shop, Milestone now boasts a comprehensive list of strategic-level services covering most functional areas of business from market research and analysis, to management and operations, and finance and accounting services – all targeted to provide assistance to our clients as they grow and put their plans into action.
We are proud of what we have achieved, and nothing gives us more satisfaction than seeing our clients succeed and thrive. Tough economic times have forced all businesses to examine their current models and operations. This has given us the opportunity to work with new companies at the strategic level and assist our clients in navigating these difficult and uncertain times.
As we look to the future, we hope to reach more companies with the desire to grow their businesses by helping them define their goals and map out clear strategic plans to achieve them.
Our passion has always been and will always be getting the best, most complete information in the hands of the decision makers for small companies and start-ups. These businesses, built out of passion and ideals, are an integral part of entrepreneurial and capitalist America. Here at Milestone, we will continue to do whatever we can to ensure they continue to survive and prosper.
We are grateful to all of our clients and staff for the past six years and we look forward to the next six years and hope they will be full of new challenges and even more solutions.
Cheers!
The
Indianapolis Business Journal featured a few "Women in Technology" in this week's issue. We have been fortunate enough to work with
Ali Sales Roach, the President of
Compendium Blogware. Here's a portion of the article about Ali:
From fellow to entrepreneur
A case in point is Alison Sales Roach, an Orr fellow from 2003 to 2005. She majored in English at DePauw University and was not very attracted to
technology.
“I was more interested in marketing and figured good writing skills couldn’t hurt any position,” said Roach, who grew up in Columbus, Ind.
As an Orr fellow, she worked for two years at ExactTarget, an e-mail marketing software company, where she was mentored by Chris Baggott, one of its co-founders. There, she became intrigued by “real-life problems that all marketers face: How do I generate a never-ending stream of demand? How do I constantly get new, inbound prospects in front of our salespeople?”
She left to head online marketing at the local office of RCI, a New Jersey-based resort timeshare network, and then at Cha-Cha, a Carmel mobile search company founded by Scott Jones.
In 2007, the entrepreneurial spirit struck. She and Baggott co-founded Compendium Blogware, which specializes in blog software and search engine optimization. Named to IBJ’s 40 Under 40 list this year, she is president of the company, which has 35 employees, offices in Circle Tower and 40 angel investors.
“Getting technology to solve problems is easy when you have lived them firsthand,” Roach said. “You are always in the shoes of your users. So I never really aspired to create technology, but technology was the inevitable solution to the problem of customer acquisition. And the broad exposure I was able to get at ExactTarget as an early employee and part of the Orr fellowship gave me a good sense of how you build a technology company from a business perspective.”
Milestone Advisors, a group of 25 Indianapolis Business Consultants, works with Ali and other CEO's of high growth companies to provide them with strategic planning, developing financial projections, accounting services, and Part Time CFO services. If you are looking for help wth your business strategy, obtaining bank financing, or just need accounting advice, give us a call. We would love to work with you too!
Congrats to Ali on the feature!
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