What we do know is that it’s lower than it should be. For example, there’s plenty of evidence that it lags quite substantially behind blue collar productivity. Why?

One of the main reasons is that IT investments aimed at increasing productivity have focused predominantly on operational execution – which falls into the domain of blue collar work. White collar work is far more difficult to pin down.

Focused more on strategic concerns, white collar work often involves a lot of meetings, discussions and collaboration with colleagues.  While some of this is necessary, much of it acts as a productivity-killer.

A lack of measurements, meanwhile, leaves many white collar workers to prove their value the old fashion way – by working longer hours. But longer hours do not necessarily mean better results.

The CFO Connection offers a solid solution to productivity-killing situations and we are appreciated by our clients.

Our seasoned pros understand the importance of being productive. When we engage a client, we hit the ground running – with no training required. And while we work intimately with management teams to meet corporate objectives, we keep the water cooler at an arm’s length and meetings to an absolute minimum.

Because we work on a part-time basis, we’re also less entangled with organizational politics. At the same time, we’re high powered professionals with long track records of success. This brings instant respect – which allows us to get to work quickly so that we can be productive as soon as possible.

The CFO Connection, having a presence in Brazil, sees this offering as a new opportunity for growing companies to compete in a globalized economy without expending resources on the consulting services of the big firms. “We offer a personal touch and the ability to shape our services to the individual needs of our customers,” said Bob Thompson, founder and CEO of The CFO Connection. “There’s no reason why a company should be prevented from doing business in Brazil because of size.”

Liaison services from The CFO Connection cover activities such as:

• Scoping the Brazilian market for relevant opportunities
• Managing communications across languages and cultures to ensure a successful business launch
• Helping you build the staff you need
• Creating legal structures that honor Brazilian requirements while optimizing business flexibility and potential for profit
• Providing investment guidance to finance overseas operations
• Locating and retaining warehouse space to store product inventory locallyNavigating Brazilian tariff laws to support compliant trading practices

All services are delivered primarily through two members of The CFO Connection team: Wilberto Lima Jr. and Ivete do Rocio Annies. Lima, a Brazilian native with extensive business experience, works on the US side where he assesses market conditions in Brazil, advises customers on where best to locate, and helps facilitate the start-up of business operations. Rocio Annies, also a Brazilian native and practicing business attorney, works on the Brazilian side. There she provides legal and business services to navigate the Brazilian regulatory system.

Both speak Portuguese, English and Spanish.  Both have executive-level international business experience. And both have run businesses of their own. The end result for customers of The CFO Connection is a smoother, more predictable process for establishing a business presence in Brazil.

“Doing business in a foreign country for the first time is often full of unforeseen risks,” said Thompson. “When it comes to Brazil, customers of the CFO Connection can avoid the common pitfalls that have the power to derail an overseas venture. We have the know-how, the experience, and the relationships required to help our customers succeed.”

Business “overnight success” stories—the venture that skyrockets from a kitchen-table project to millions in short order—seem to be everywhere. However, the truth is usually that fast growth is the result of excellent strategy, constant re-evaluation of core business areas, and careful reinvestment for growth.

“Specifically, business owners need to understand what I call their ‘Best and Highest Use.’ It’s a concept that effectively says, ‘Figure out what your company is best at doing, what they like doing, and what the marketplace has previously valued them for doing,’” says business growth consultant Andy Birol, founder of Birol Growth Consulting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Then, he adds, focus your investment of time and resources on those areas to accelerate the growth of your business.

The first step, says Terry Mackin, managing director of Generational Equity, a Dallas, Texas–based mergers and acquisitions consultancy, is to closely monitor cash flow and control costs, especially in areas that don’t contribute to the core functions of your business. Many companies have failed during times of economic downturn and uncertainty because they were not vigilant in cutting and controlling costs in proportion to the downturn in their businesses. As your business grows, you may find that some departments or sectors are duplicating efforts or that streamlining some functions may yield savings and efficiency, adds Birol. For example, moving all print production efforts through one central location can help your company negotiate better volume discounts than having varied accounts from different departments. As you determine which areas of your business are most profitable or yield the greatest results, adjust your annual budgets to support those key areas.

As they emerge from a difficult economic climate, businesses should also be looking at capital investments they have been delaying, says Robert S. Lee, business banking equipment finance executive at Banc of America Leasing & Capital, LLC. Many companies have been conservative about making such investments or taking on new debt. However, he adds, strategic acquisition or leasing of equipment can improve efficiency and maximize productivity, often yielding significant savings, which can then be reinvested into the business for further growth. Lee helps guide his clients through the process of choosing whether to lease or purchase equipment, based on the long-term objectives of the business, the type of equipment to be acquired and the business’s federal income tax position, among other factors.

“It is time to look at what capital equipment your business needs to take advantage of growth opportunities as economic conditions improve. Investments made now can give your business an edge over companies that further delay capital investments,” he notes.

Most businesses need to make their technology and equipment investment a strategic part of their growth plan, says Mackin. Technology can be an important factor in preserving resources, managing inventory and materials, and automating processes to reduce waste and enhance productivity, and it can even help bolster a business’s valuation. Automating as many functions as possible allows the time and salaries once spent on those areas to be redirected to other areas that will enhance the product or service, increase sales, or improve customer satisfaction—all areas that will further the business’s expansion. “One of the first things buyers do when they come in and look at a business is to look at the technology,” he says.

Birol says other key investments include market research and customer service. Having a true, objective understanding of the marketplace and what your customers value about your business is essential in order to discover your business’s Best and Highest Use, he says. However, growing businesses may lose sight of their levels of service or the reasons customers rely on them. Investing time and resources into a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) system and evaluating sales and market data to uncover trends are critical as businesses grow. This data mining can predict market opportunities and help the business find areas that customers dislike, providing key information for the business to improve and become stronger. In addition, investing in the people and resources you need to provide top-notch customer service is essential, since keeping customers happy and engaged with your business costs far less, in most cases, than acquiring a new customer, he says.

By focusing on the core of the business, cutting non-essential expenses, and reinvesting in core functions, businesses can position themselves for growth even in difficult economic times, says Birol. And that repositioning will make them better able than their competition to seize growth opportunities when market conditions improve.

Article published by Capital Eyes/Bank of America, Jul. – Aug., 2012

To stay competitive, organizations need to continually find opportunities for innovation in key processes such as customer service and product development, and adoption of a new process almost always requires the implementation of new information technology. In his 1990 classic HBR article “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate,” Michael Hammer argued that IT must drive radical process innovation.

Unfortunately, this creates two problems. First, as Hammer argued, these large investments in new IT systems tend to deliver disappointing results, largely because companies tend to use technology to mechanize old ways of doing business. That is, they leave the existing processes intact and use computers simply to speed them up, rather than redesign them from scratch.

Second, they don’t take enough advantage of the innovative abilities of their people themselves. Employees often feel victimized rather than energized by the changes. They’re subjected to retraining, and they have to radically alter their routines, often in ways that they don’t think will work as well. Hammer nonetheless argued for using the power of information technology to redesign a cross-functional process, then deal with the people issues. Though many workers will resist a new process imposed on them, competitive demands need to override resistance. I heard him say, “We will carry the wounded but shoot the stragglers.”

Hammer’s thinking was very powerful, but I’d challenge that last point. The best way to solve both of these problems — and make innovation efforts stick — is not to impose a new process or technology system, but rather have front-line employees drive the change. You’ll get fewer stragglers, and end up with better ideas — ideas that come from the people who do the work every day and see the most glaring problems. Avoiding a new technology may not be an option, but it shouldn’t come first.

Look at ING, a leading bank in the Netherlands, which sets about process improvement by first getting its employees to recommend changes, ideally in short iterations and with frequent feedback loops, to avoid depleting people’s energy and to decrease the likelihood of going too far down the wrong path.

David Bogaerts and Jael Schuyer are process improvement experts in ING’s IT and operations group. They say their projects are more successful when they follow the sequence of people, then process, then technology. “If you automate too quickly, you don’t find out what the front-line people need,” they explained to me recently. “We stay with manual workflows longer than others. Until you have a clear idea of what people need, you may automate workarounds and waste. For example, we worked with people in our Automating Department to improve their processes (using “Lean” and “Agile” methods), and we are now looking at technology to further improve the processes in ways that will revolutionize them.”

ING acknowledges that it has occasionally neglected to engage workers adequately, with disappointing results. “In the case of a workflow management software project, we bought the tool and told people to use it,” Bogaerts and Schuyer said. “It was technology first, then process, then people, and it didn’t work very well.”

No doubt new technology systems can help bring about dramatic process improvements, no matter how much employees howl about the change. Yet organizations that implement an enterprise system (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.) frequently underestimate the costs of front-line resistance. The systems force people to change the way they work, and while they eventually adapt, most implementations are delayed, operations suffer temporarily, and revenue can take a hit, as at Hershey Foods and Lumber Liquidators.

Why not tap into their expertise instead of dragging them along? Your investments will be better spent, and your workforce is much more likely to buy into the whole thing. As Bogaerts and Schuyer said to me, when workers identify improvements in their jobs, a new computer system appears as an opportunity to eliminate waste and better serve customers, not as a threat.

Engaging workers as drivers of process changes may seem like it’s slowing things down, particularly in implementing a revolutionary enterprise system. But what’s your alternative? You either pay upfront and get worker ownership and sustainability of changes, or you pay later to get buy-in and overcome resistance. The ride is much smoother when you can have your workers be drivers, not passengers.

Brad Power

Brad Power is a consultant and researcher in process innovation. His current research is on sustaining attention to process management. He is currently conducting research with the Lean Enterprise Institute.

1. Don’t negotiate for a bigger share of the pie. Do work with the other party to make the pie bigger.
2. Don’t use confrontational language that creates defend/attack spirals. Do develop a friendly, trusting relationship with your opposite number.
3. Don’t make concessions without getting something in return. Do think of what the other party will value that won’t cost you much.
4. Don’t agree to a deal that doesn’t meet your must-have needs. Do plan the negotiation with a clear understanding of your BANTA, or your Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.
5. Don’t negotiate one issue at a time. Do put everything on the table at the start and encourage your partner to do it so there can be lots of trade-offs.
6. Don’t just keep muddling through if the negotiation seems stuck. Do change the dynamics: Sleep on it, move to a new location, ask for “crazy” ideas that can unleash creativity, or change the negotiators.

How to Keep the Negotiation from Derailing

The longer a negotiation drags on, the less likely it is to get closed, Ann Lawrence, a partner in the law firm DLA Piper, says.

“All negotiations need to have a deadline or they may never finish,” according to Huthwaite’s John Golden. “This is not to say that the deadline can’t be extended with the agreement of both parties. If you are buying a fleet of jet fighters, for example, you want to make sure that the service contract meets all contingencies. That could take a while. It doesn’t need to preclude a deadline, however.”

Negotiations that seem endless can create frustration and cause the negotiators to act out. Call attention to the bad behavior, suggests Michelle Lederman of Executive Essentials, an employee training firm. “Not with a pointing of a finger, though,” she adds. Acknowledge that the circumstances are difficult. Schedule a break. Sleeping on it overnight might be helpful.

When anxiety and anger threaten a negotiation, Michael Bechara, managing director of Granite Consulting Group, suggests that the parties put their positions on the shelf and come up with three alternative solutions. This can open the door to a new approach that works.

A stubborn impasse can be resolved with a move to another location. Mark Jankowski, president of Shapiro Negotiations Institute, was involved in a bitter negotiation that pitted the Baltimore Police Chief against his top lieutenant, with each using the media to further his cause and increasing the tension. Mr. Jankowski moved the negotiation from the city to a farm. In the reopened talks he took the position of the lieutenant while his partner represented the police chief. A negotiation that had been deadlocked for months was resolved in an evening.

Creative approaches to making the pie bigger also can keep sales negotiations from reaching an impasse. The Haas School’s Prof. Moore says a buyer or seller who says “This is my final offer” might be stuck in that position because to change it would cause a loss of credibility. “The best approach might be to say I’ll pay the price but I want this and that and that,” he says.

Linda Richardson, the author and sales trainer, suggests that a customer who insists on a 10% discount can be given it — in return for a three-year contract, up-front payment, or changes in terms for delivery or service.

Though a ninth-inning zinger likely is a hardball negotiator’s tactic, don’t assume it is. Mike Schultz, president of the Rain Group sales consultancy, tells of a friend who was selling his midsize technology company to a larger business. The parties agreed in principle on the buyout but after thinking about it the seller realized he was under-pricing his company. He explained his position at the next meeting. The other company grumbled but said fine and the deal was done at the new number, Mr. Schultz reported. With openness and flexibility on each side both enjoyed a satisfying resolution.

ChiefExecutive.Net, by George Nicholas

According to a quarterly Global Business Outlook survey conducted by Duke University and CFO Magazine, CFOs in the United States and Asia are more optimistic this quarter and expect to see an increase in hiring.

873 CFOs from global and public companies  participated in the survey which has been conducted for 64 consecutive quarters and result in the following findings:

• 68% of U.S. CFOs are currently trying to fill vacant job positions
• U.S. finance chiefs plan to expand their workforces by slightly more than 2 percent on average over the next 12 months, a staffing increase that would bring the unemployment rate below 8 percent.
• U.S. CFOs rated their optimism in the nation’s economy at 53 this quarter (on a scale from 0 to 100).

Additionally, there is a stronger employment outlook. “The expected increase in employment is a welcome improvement over last quarter’s 1.5 percent forecast growth rate,” said Kate O’Sullivan, director of content development at CFO Magazine. “It indicates that national unemployment should fall below 8 percent in 2012.”

Click here to read full release.

Perhaps lack of growth is not considered failure by some business owners, but Jay Goltz has a different view. Partially based on his own personal business experience, he discusses how working harder and not realizing the benefits of growth can be the downfall of a company, “there is an uncomfortable place between big and very small, where the owner is still doing a lot of the work and still not making much of a living,” states Goltz. Read the full article “10 reason why some businesses can fail by failing to grow.”

THE CFO CONNECTION ADDS DAVID SCHLOTTMAN
Expands Presence to Florida

Naples, Florida – March 5, 2012 – The CFO Connection has added David Schlottman to its growing team of part-time CFOs serving companies with extensive financial and business management expertise.

Based out of the Naples/Ft Myers area, Schlottman expands the presence of The CFO Connection to the state of Florida.

The CFO Connection is a national firm that provides part-time CFO services to small and mid-sized companies in North and South America. The addition of Schlottman to the firm’s team comes as The CFO Connection ramps up operations to meet increased demand for innovative CFO services that deliver value at reasonable cost. The CFO Connection meets this market need through the part-time CFO model. This model pairs smaller organizations that cannot justify the expense of a full-time CFO with the expertise of seasoned CFOs who provide services on a permanent, part-time basis.

“Dave’s experience steering numerous companies toward more profitable growth makes him the kind of CFO our customers are looking for,” said Bob Thompson, founder and CEO of The CFO Connection.

Schlottman brings more than 30 years of experience to his new role. Before joining The CFO Connection, he served as CFO for a national distributor and manufacturer of custom formwork and shoring equipment. There he helped the company increase its borrowing capacity, implement a cash forecasting system, and set new prices to optimize profitability – all as part of a campaign to facilitate growth and transition from distribution to manufacturing. The following year the company grew by 40%.

Schlottman has had similar success elsewhere. Working with the largest electrical subcontractor in Florida during a time of rapid growth, he put the company on a sound financial footing by introducing strict financial controls and reporting mechanisms. He also implemented a purchasing system that saved the company millions of dollars. And his analysis and ideas to overcome the impact of crushing increases in copper prices allowed the company to continue to grow.

As the CFO for one of the fastest growing burglar alarm companies in Florida, Schlottman also managed 30 acquisitions ranging from $100,000 to $12 million. This enabled the company to grow its account base from 10,000 to more than 72,000 – while increasing revenues by more than 600%.

“I’ve never met a company that doesn’t want to grow,” said Schlottman. “And my focus has always been on helping reach their highest possible potential. I look forward to helping my clients in Florida manage their finances to open up new opportunities and optimize long-term business performance.”

David Schlottman can be reached by email at ds@TheCFOConnection.com or by phone 239-682-9450