January 11, 2019

Poor System Integration & Company Culture Misalignment Leads to M&A Failure

Poor System Integration & Company Culture Misalignment Leads to M&A Failure

In a merger or acquisition, discord of company cultures and disparate systems can cause the demise of a once-promising partnership. About 70% of acquisitions fail when post-acquisition results don’t meet pre-closing expectations. Many of these M&A failures are caused by poorly executed integration.

What’s surprising is that M&A failures are avoidable with careful integration planning and strategic post merger integration. Pre-acquisition, it takes a lot of forethought on how company cultures might clash and how their systems will integrate. Post-acquisition, it takes a ton of strategic elbow grease to rapidly align systems (and eliminate some), retain productive employees, keep customers, and make stakeholders happy.

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January 4, 2019

Jumpstart the Year With a Health Checkup on Your Business

Jumpstart the Year With a Health Checkup on Your Business

Lose weight. Exercise more. The new year’s resolutions are in full gear right now. Whether it’s getting to the gym, reading more, or eating more greens, January usually begins with a reflection of how we did and what we can do more, better, faster this year.

We focus so much on being proactive in our health and personal care. But what about our business health? Is it just business as usual, again? Or do we have bigger business goals for the year ahead?

Talking to company owners and investors over the years, we have discovered a lot less proactivity than you’d expect and a lot more complacency. We don’t mean activity – everyone has lots of to-do lists – where busy work mask over big or growing problems.

We often get calls when the house is on fire: cash is draining away from the business, employees are jumping ship, frustrations are mounting, or lack of fresh thinking, innovation and true leadership have led to stagnation in the market. Owners say to us my ‘business is failing, what do I do’.

It’s hard not to think how many sleepless nights could have been avoided for an owner if they would have just acted sooner. We mean solve the issues not just by trying to dive in themselves or harangue the management team more, but instead through resources or tools that could extend their capabilities and help make vision a reality.

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December 18, 2018
Robert Jordan

What is My Business Strategy? Owners Need a Game Plan

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
What is My Business Strategy? Owners Need a Game Plan

No organization is immune to challenges, not if it has any ambition. But how do we as owners and leaders put our strategy hat on to see down the road, or attempt to see, to predict where markets will go, how customers will act and react? To play the great game of chess in the real world – which is strategy.

Sometimes that is easier said than done. The eloquent Mike Tyson put it so well when he said, “everybody has a plan until I punch them in the mouth.” We would do well to remember how limited our brilliant strategies in fact are, how fragile in the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and future black swan events.

Just look to history to see how companies have been blindsided with the punch they never saw coming. Kodak invented the first digital camera in 1975, but put launch on hold in fear of cannibalizing their film business. We all know the story from there….Kodak who? Or take Blockbuster – which failed to pivot when Netflix showed up. And then Borders and Barnes & Noble, crushed under the Amazon onslaught. And the examples of business strategy gone wrong go on…

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December 13, 2018

Family Offices Use Interim CFOs to Improve Operations and Make Sound Investments

Family Offices Use Interim CFOs to Improve Operations and Make Sound Investments

There’s no question that the number of family offices is on the rise. A recent study by Campden Research revealed that there are over 5,300 family offices worldwide. About 2,200 of the family offices are in North America. About 67% of family offices that exist today were established after 2000.

There aren’t hard and fast rules on what a modern-day family office looks like. A single family office typically has over $150 million in private wealth and is one family. In recent years, multi-family offices have increased. In multi-family offices, families — related or not —  have shared interests, investment goals, infrastructure needs, or operational requirements. By coming together, they save resources. This way family offices can focus more energy on portfolio growth and increasing net profit margins.

Over the past decade, the way family offices invest has evolved. In the past, family offices stayed in their comfort zone, by acquiring operating businesses in their business sector.

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December 7, 2018

Interim Executives Help Grow Private Equity Portfolio Companies

It’s not uncommon for private equity portfolio companies to double or even triple growth thanks to merger or acquisition. Albeit positive, rapid growth brings new operational challenges that can stop the upward momentum in its tracks. Interim executives bring the expertise needed to enable growth on a massive scale.

“Sometimes a business will start with $40 million in sales, and through acquisition will be two or three times that size. Often that creates an environment where you need to add to the management team, whether that be the CFO or the CEO,” said Forest Wester, a Partner at Trivest Partners that leverages interim executives to enable growth.

Private equity funds use interim executives in a variety of scenarios. However, these scenarios are typically problems that need to be solved such as the abrupt departure of a CEO.

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November 6, 2018

How an Outsourced CMO Enables Business Growth and Builds Brand Power

How an Outsourced CMO Enables Business Growth and Builds Brand Power

More than ever, a consistent brand that customers trust is critical to business growth. Whether product or service-based, B2B or B2C, local or global-focused, a strong brand with a great reputation is what enables a company to expand successfully.

Behind every powerful brand, stands an innovative Chief Marketing Officer. An experienced CMO can strategically plan and scale marketing plans during periods of business growth.

But not all companies can afford to hire a full-time CMO on a permanent basis. Many startups and midmarket companies reach a tipping point where they either expand or stagnate. All too often, the rate of business expansion they want to achieve outpaces their available operational resources and time.

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July 23, 2018
Olivia Wagner

Signs Your Struggling Business Needs Help

Olivia Wagner | President, InterimExecs
Signs Your Struggling Business Needs Help

We were having a conversation with an executive recently who shared about their experience parachuting into a business that was struggling with operational inefficiencies.

This executive, like many interims, kicked off the assignment by meeting face-to-face with the management team and employees to learn how the business functions, what’s working, and what isn’t. Their findings would turn into an operational roadmap of the business, where they would set out and implement a go-forward plan. When meeting with one team member and learning about what they did, the executive pointed to a process they had in place asking “why do you do that?”

 The answer: “Because we’ve always done it that way”

 (Alarm bells begin to loudly ring)

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July 18, 2018

How an Interim CFO Can Quickly Grow Your Business

How an Interim CFO Can Quickly Grow Your Business

Interim management has arrived, and it only took 50 years, from a specialty that started in the Netherlands and moved slowly around the world. And its first and best incarnation is the interim CFO.

A good Chief Financial Officer will help a business catapult to the next stage of growth. Whether public, private or private equity backed, a CFO leads and implements strategy that ultimately creates value for shareholders, increasing EBITDA and cash flow. The means to get there may look different for each organization, but companies choose to bring in an Interim CFO because they are looking for transformation:

Operational Improvement and Strategic Planning

An Interim CFO will streamline accounting and financial reporting, helping owners, board members, investors and the management team get a clear look into the state of the business.

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July 9, 2018
Robert Jordan

What Keeps Business Owners Up at Night

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
What Keeps Business Owners Up at Night

The best, truest, and most bleak line I’ve heard from a mega-successful company founder was Dave Becker telling me: “we have all had the sleepless nights, when it’s 2am and you’re staring at the ceiling.” Dave is the founder of a number of companies including First Internet Bancorp (Nasdaq: INBK), the granddaddy of online banking.

From the outside, we see a successful entrepreneur with multiple home runs and think they must be sitting on easy street. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is: everything. It always appears easy or obvious once a company has made it, but what we often don’t hear about are the trials and tribulations that happen at every stage of a company’s growth from young and unknown, to in between, and then big and ambitious. The sleepless nights. The questions of can you make payroll. The we-almost-went-bankrupt moments. This is real and it’s no surprise that many of our inquiries for help from owners show up in our inbox after the 9-5 employees have gone home.

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June 29, 2018

How Turning Around a Company Looks Different Today

How Turning Around a Company Looks Different Today

Turnarounds aren’t what they used to be.

Like a good spy movie, turnarounds used to center around a strong central figure making things happen. Turnaround stars and distress experts were born, like Stephen Cooper of Enron and Krispy Kreme fame.

In 1985 the Turnaround Management Association started as a conference of company turnaround specialists in Chapel Hill, ultimately creating a rigorous formal program and exam for Certified Turnaround Professionals.

“Back then the time frame for turnarounds was long,” Richard Lindenmuth, an executive who has completed 23 turnarounds over the years said. “There was bridge financing from banks that would facilitate a turnaround and bankruptcy was really used as a tool for restructuring a company.”

Times have changed. Many of the Fortune 500 companies from those days have merged or disappeared due to outdated technology, products, or services (think RCA, Blackberry, Zenith). At the same time, the way to turn around a struggling business has transformed, being driven by several factors:

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