Services Back-office Maintenance Most people go into business for themselves because they are very good at something, because they love what they do, or both. However, once they are in business for themselves, they discover that they must spend a significant amount of time doing other things: preparing customer invoices and statements, paying bills, preparing payroll, filing taxes, etc. While necessary to the success of any business, these activities are not “revenue generating”

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Roger K. Laxton, CPA Overview

Many of the business owners I talk to believe that the first thing the bank will look at when they have applied for a loan is the bottom line of their profit and loss statement.  They believe that the biggest question the bank will ever ask of their business is “Are they making a profit?”  But this widely-held belief couldn’t be more WRONG.  Profits mean very little without cash flow.  Cash is king and it is the bank’s first consideration when assessing a loan application.  Why?  Because profits don’t repay loans – cash repays loans.  Because c ash is the fuel that every business engine runs on.  Because c ash is like oxygen to your business – without it, the business dies.  I think I’ve made my point.  But I don’t believe you can ever over-emphasise the importance of having a cash management plan when you are running a business.  I have personally seen numerous profitable businesses fail because they didn’t have a plan in place to manage their cash flow.  Worse yet are the failures caused by business owners that simply don’t have a clue about cash flow management at all.  And when a business has decided it needs to borrow money, it is typically because there are issues with the cash flow of that business.  That doesn’t mean it’s not a good business.  That doesn’t mean that the business doesn’t have good management.  It simply means that a large portion of the issues businesses face come down to being able to manage their cash flow.  Now don’t get me wrong, a business does need to be turning a profit – no business can survive by selling for less than their costs - but business owners need to change their mindset when it comes to profits and realise that there is a second, critical element to running a bankable business – knowing how to manage cash flow. That is precisely why your business plan needs to include three-way financial projections that are being used on at least a monthly basis as the backbone of your business budget.  Simply going through the process of creating a three-way financial projection (or having one done for you and then getting it clearly explained to you) will help you make better management decisions.  You need to know, month to month, how you are performing against your projected profit and loss statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flow.  This can be quite complex depending on your business type, so don’t be afraid to get help preparing or understanding the projections.  At a basic level, having a cash management plan means having an understanding of the 7 key drivers of any business’ cash flow.  Below, I have listed each of the 7 Cash Drivers , followed by some questions and observations that you should take into consideration when preparing your plan for managing the cash flow of your business.  Remember, if you don’t have a handle on your business cash flow, you’re unlikely to get the backing of your bank.  Even worse, you’re unlikely to have a business that will stand the test of time and be consistently successful.

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The Bank Won’t Back You Because…You Don’t Have a Cash Management Plan

A trend that I have been noticing more and more is the presence of multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems at organizations.  There are many reasons why the scenario of multiple ECM Systems can occur; 1) mergers & acquisitions, 2) strengths of the ECM products, 3) lack of internal communication and/or understanding of existing systems in the organization, 4) division of dollars at departmental levels, and so forth and so on… One issue that can arise from having multiple ECM solutions within an organization is the difficulty of accessing information stored in the different systems.  Let’s look at an example of an organization that has two ECM systems used for content archiving and retrieval.  The first ECM system is used by the Human Resources department for storing documents and data related to employee on-boarding and personnel management.  The second ECM system was installed at a later date by the Accounts Payable department.  This system is used for managing documents related to payroll, as well as, acting as portal for employees to find information related to their pay.  The presence of multiple systems within the organization creates a number of headaches (i.e. managing of storage, security/permissions, what information is where, etc…), but for now let’s focus on the fact that there are users that need access to the documents and metadata stored in both systems.

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Managing Multiple ECM Systems at an Organization