November 2011: Value Proposition – One Found/One Sought

Daniel Calista, Founder & CEO, Vynamic.   In 2011, voted Philadelphia’s Best Place to Work and Consulting Magazine named them One of Seven Small Jewels.

Practicing Your Value Proposition:

Pursuing your core value as your top priority can lead to satisfying fulfillment – and extraordinary growth.  In fact, if your mantra is “to grow for your people, not at the expense of your people”, you might grow:

• at the rate of 35% per year
• from 1 person to over 50
• to being voted #1  Best Place to Work Medium Size Company in Philadelphia. 

You’d be Vynamic. 

Of course, it’s not as simple as focusing on your own people.  For Vynamic the mission was also based on an innovative approach – applying the lessons learned in a premier general consultancy to a very specific field – healthcare.  They combined their dedication to workplace with a focus on a growing and underserved industry.

In 2002, Vynamic was started with only a laptop and a dream.  But Dan Calista, its founder, knew the importance of human resources.  As a consultancy, human is virtually the only resource.  While working with the large Andersen Consulting/Accenture, Dan enjoyed the advantage of premium benefits at the same time that he endured the limiting effect of being a small cog in a big wheel at the beck and call of an unfeeling hierarchy.  He determined to bring the advantages of a professional state-of-the-art human resource department to his employees while avoiding the almost inhuman demands of a large company.

Partnering with Insperity, he was relieved of the legal and administrative stress of being an employer.  Dan was able to concentrate on making Vynamic a great place to work.  He grew to six employees in the first year.  He now has 55 employees and has hired an in-house Director of Human Resources to work with Insperity’s Emerging Growth Business Performance Advisors. 

Vynamic was founded on employee selection, conditions, and treatment to such an extent that it enhanced the company brand.  While Dan Calista is looking at professionalizing other aspects of his business, employees, who Dan refers to as the “team”, will always be at the core of his success.  Visit http://www.vynamic.com/#/team to see how Vynamic leverages the team advantage.

What value proposition could you professionalize to grow your company and attain your goals?

John Penrose, Wharton MBA and Business Builder, is in search of a business partner to pilot the technique described below.

Customers can’t tell you that……

Why can’t our customers tell us what’s really important? Maybe the way we ask them to articulate what’s important about our product or service is the problem. Unfortunately, increasingly complex, expensive and artificial market research approaches don’t help much. Wharton MBA John Penrose and his PhD colleague have developed a new, refreshingly simple approach – based on real life trade-offs – that makes it easier for customers (employees, vendors, etc.) to tell you what really matters to them. They’re looking for a beta partner to help document the power of their technique. It’s a free chance to learn something valuable about your customers.

When presented with a reasonable set of things (say, the features of a new car), customers will typically rate those things similarly. As a result, the features all appear important. This mash-up makes extracting actionable insight from customer data almost impossible. If you’ve ever tried to interpret the difference between a 3.4 and a 3.5 average survey score, then you’ve experienced this problem. If you’ve resorted to testing the statistical difference between the two scores, you’ve fallen even deeper into the trap (significance isn’t always meaningful difference).

The trap occurs when we ask customers to do something they don’t actually do in real life: make decisions in a vacuum. Most surveys present one feature at a time, resulting in multiple, independent evaluations. In real life consumers decide based on the total value they derive from trade-offs among all the things involved in the decision. In the car analogy style is important but so are mileage, comfort, reliability, price, brand image, financing….

Market researchers have spent years developing more and more complex techniques to understand how consumers make these trade-offs (does conjoint ring a bell?).  These approaches can yield great insight but they also consume significant resources, and their complexity can confuse customers and compromise the results. There has to be a better way!

We have developed a real life, trade-off technique that allows each user to array a product’s relevant features in a simple priority structure. The results deliver much more realistic measures for each feature that you can compare across demographics and tracked over time. Thus far, we’re seeing real differences among features where conventional approaches have shown none.

We’re looking for a business partner to pilot the technique. We’ll conduct the study and interpret the findings at no charge.  You’ll get insight to drive better decisions with greater confidence, and we’ll document the results on an anonymous basis. Contact John Penrose at 617-962-0888 or johnpenrose@verizon.net to learn more.

It’s your turn.  Do either of these ring a cord with you?  Tell us by posting your thoughts on this blog.

July 2011: 3 Paths to Change; Uphill, Downhill & Direct

Rudy Bazelmans, Regional Director, Expense Reduction Analysts, a cost-management expert. 

Q3 2011 ‘Changes/Trends in Expense Reduction’

Among the mid-size companies we work with, we are seeing a shift from a cost-cutting priority to one of growth and margin management at the same time. In our recent survey of 325 finance leaders, we found that 14% said top-line growth was a priority, 12% margins and 74% said both.  They are seeing the need to watch both because there is a concern that as sales rise, the expenses may go up faster than sales growth – this is a large shift from 2 years ago when we last survey showed a focus of 15% top-line, 33% margin and only 53% both.  The challenge that was almost universally expressed this time was how both missions can be accomplished effectively.

To learn more about Rudy Bazelmans and Expense Reduction Analysts go to Rudy’s LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rudybazelmans or contact Rudy directly rbazelmans@expensereduction.com.

Laurie Kirk, Founder/CEO THE BOARD FORUM CEO ROUNDTABLES, with more than 30 years of strategic experience leading Fortune 500 and small to mid-size companies. 

To Be or To Change – That Is the Question:

Now that my business has reached critical mass, I could be satisfied, BUT, now I want to scale TBF much faster! I want to do in six months what would take me 1-2 years in the past.  I have new strategies and tactics in 2011. What I have learned: the challenge of rapid growth is to never lose focus on the core business, customers and values while putting the engine into high gear. Otherwise, rapid growth can put you out of business.

I am in a continuously exciting environment as part of an organization of CEOs, Entrepreneurs and Owners committed to the growth of their companies and themselves as leaders.  We have groups who have met for over ten years. Double and triple-digit growth for members is common – including the middle market companies.  The combination of world class facilitators and ambitious smart members is an ongoing growth fest for all of us.

What MUST I do/have/maintain no matter what?  Our member’s success and our success is based on our efforts to have peers who ‘fit together’ matched with a specific Facilitator who is or has been a CEO, AND make sure that every member at every meeting resolves an issue. This is my non-negotiable. This is our ‘value’.

Now we leverage that value to launch several new groups in the next six months.  And the following six months, we will launch several more.  For example, our new Technology Board Forum CEO group for companies under $20MM will stimulate the accelerated momentum for every member!

In addition, we create a variety of ways for CEOs to connect with other CEOs beyond their own group.  The Board Forum Institute will convene its next event, for 100 CEOs to network with each other, and benefit from a CEO speaker with an incomparably successful track record.

To learn more about Laurie Kirk and The Board Forum go to this LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriekirk.

Elizabeth W. Brown, President at Softeach, Inc.  a national, dynamic software training and consulting company with 180 instructors and 3,000 clients. 

Business Planning is Like Skiing:

During 25+ years of entrepreneurship, I have learned that companies move to the next level only if they have clearly defined what that next level is to be and developed a plan.  This plan can be a flow chart, a traditional business plan typically used for funding or similar.   This plan helps the entrepreneur make decisions, keeping the ultimate goal in mind.    The next level or goal can be to franchise, add additional locations, and move from a physical office organization to a virtual one or even to shrink the business.  

 This is not too different from skiing.   If one is skiing from the top of the mountain, the goal is to reach the lodge at the base of the mountain.  How one gets to the lodge, depends on the trails one chooses.  One can choose expert trails, trails with more scenery, more relaxing trails and/or trails that combine all of the above.   Above all, the goal is to get to the lodge.   In building a business, an overall goal (lodge) needs to be established and how one gets there will also depend on which “ trails” (added physical locations, franchises, virtual locations, funding etc.) one chooses.  There are many variables that affect the choices one makes in choosing trails i.e. weather, depth of snow base, ice, etc. For business goals, there are also many variables that effect the “trails” one chooses including seasonal drops in revenue, training of employees for employee retention and morale etc…  These include a recession, interest rates and others.

 Over the life of SOFTEACH, there have been several goals (lodges) including taking SOFTEACH from a customized on-site computer training firm to a global online and on-site computer training firm.   SOFTEACH continues to choose trails to reach and maintain this and other goals.   The fun is in the “skiing” (figuring out how best (which trails) to reach your business goal).   Choose your “trails” carefully with your business goal in mind.  

To learn more about Softeach, Inc. and Elizabeth Brown take a look at SOFTEACH on YouTube!  or Blog with SOFTEACH!

May 2011: Two Insperity clients answered the question “What lesson did you learn last year?”

Andy Freed, Co Founder/EVP/COO Virtual Inc.:  In 2010 Inc. Magazine listed Virtual as one of America’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial businesses.

Probably the biggest lesson I learned in 2010 was to constantly try and concentrate only on the “micro”- things we could change and influence within our own organization – and to be cognizant that we can’t change the “macro” – meaning the economy and market as a whole.  If we focused our energies on providing our clients with exceptional service and value, the things directly under our control, the rest would all take care of itself.  We were fortunate that this turned out well for us-despite the challenging economy; we posted record revenue and double-digit growth.

To learn more about Virtual Inc., Andy Freed and his partner Bruce Rogers go to http://www.virtualmgmt.com/.

Chris Stephenson along with his partner, Chris Smith founded ARRYVE Consulting.  In March 2011 Consulting Magazine named them one of Seven Small Jewels for 2011.   http://finance.boston.com/boston/news/read?GUID=18038984

I think we learned in 2010 just how important our people are to the success of the firm.  The start of that analysis actually goes back to 2009 when many of our competitors were announcing layoffs and other cost cutting measures.  ARRYVE made a deliberate decision to keep its staff and while it impacted our utilization and margins, we were able to leverage downtime to continue to build infrastructure and prepare ARRYVE for a rebound. In 2010 we saw the results quickly in both staffing availability and the recruiting infrastructure our team built during that downtime.  While many of our competitors were trying to rehire staff they had previously let go, we were positioned to grow with the same staff we had been able to keep employed and our recruiting engine was running at full speed. 

I think a big portion of our growth last year as a firm was due to the good-will we created during the recession.  Keeping our people created a loyalty within the ARRYVE community and also served as a differentiator to attract top industry talent to our firm.  As we moved to 2011 however, we realized that memories can be short and that our competitors were going to try and outbid loyalty.  This year we decided to combat that strategy by beefing up our own benefits. We added loyalty rewards at the 3 and 5 year employment mark that just received press in the WSJ and also added a $250 reimbursement to any employee wellness costs incurred each year.

Our people are the reason we continue to grow and investing in them will always be a key strategy.  Finding new investments each year will be important to the firm’s growth and we think our additions in FY11 position the firm to have another strong growth year. 

To learn more about Chris Stephenson and Chris Smith of ARRYVE Consulting go to http://www.arryveconsulting.com/.

It’s your turn.  Do either of these strategies ring a cord with you?  Tell us by posting your thoughts on this blog.

First Edition: a question was asked of one client and one colleague.

Kathy Murphy, CEO of Chi Solutions, Inc., a healthcare consultancy and a client:  What lesson did you learn last year?

Lyn- as I think about lessons from our recent recession, the most striking yet simple truth for me was: adjust to the “new normal” quickly rather than waiting it out or hoping for things to turnaround. As leaders, we think long and hard about difficult decisions such as staff reductions. This is even more true during tough economic times when other family members may already have been impacted by the economic downturn. Yet, we do our companies and our staffs a disservice by less decisive action.

The recent recession lasted two years or more (depending upon your industry). Many companies implemented staff reductions in a piecemeal fashion over this period. None of us ever wanted to believe that the recession would be as long or as deep. Some of us never made reductions until it was over. Experts tell us that decisive action is better for employee morale. We all know that it is better for company stability. Yet, we flounder because we understand that we are dealing with real people and real families. Our emotions get in the way. We become very reactive. We “scrape by”. The company is worse off because we can’t afford to make investments for the future and, ironically, employees aren’t any happier.

My lesson from the recession is to be more proactive. Make decisions quickly to ensure the stability of the company for the long term. Ensure that the company is profitable to the extent needed for continuous investment for the future. Do it right the first time.

To learn more about Kathy Murphy and Chi Solutions Inc. go to www.chisolutionsinc.com

Travis Drouin, Partner at MFA – Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico:  How did your clients weather the economic challenges last year? 

At MFA – Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico, we see a lot of different businesses at various stages of their lifecycles.  And as one of MFA’s audit partners, I have a distinct view into our clients’ business models, strategies and drivers for success.  The past few years have been interesting, to say the least. 

In the way of a quick background, MFA – Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico is one of the area’s largest CPA firms, offering clients a compelling alternative to giant national accounting firms.  I’ve been a part of the MFA team since 2001 and I personally work very closely with companies that are funded with outside investment from angel, venture funds, and private equity funds.  In turn, that means that I get to see a tremendous number of technology-based companies, sometimes at the time of their formation, and other times much later in their lifecycle as they mature. 

Lyn Kaplan, a Business Performance Advisor at Insperity, recently asked me how our clients have weathered the economic challenges of the past few years.  As I reflected on Lyn’s question, my first response was that “it depends”.  When I look at MFA’s broader client base of non-technology based businesses, whether they are manufacturers of commercial or retail products, service providers, or financial services providers, it is a very mixed bag. 

Some of those non-technology based clients have just come off of their 2010 reporting year with some fantastic earnings results and respectable revenue growth.  In many of those cases, earnings have improved greatly due, in part, to many of the cost saving tactics deployed in late 2008 and throughout 2009.  With revenue growth returning for some, those same companies have remained cautiously optimistic and have kept a tight rein on expenditures.  This does wonders for their bottom-line earnings.  Others, however, have not fared so well and continue to struggle to meet their obligations. 

In the sliver of the world where I spend a lot of my time – investor-backed technology companies – I have seen a lot of growth and value creation.  For all the talk and valid data that suggests that venture and angel investment is down, a lot of deals are still getting funded.  Investor sentiment in these areas continues to be strong, and arguably the deals that “should get funded” are getting funded, while many of the others that may have been funded in frothier times are the ones left to find alternative financing sources.  And despite the absence of a robust IPO market (which would be great to see return, especially here in New England), M&A activity in technology has been healthy and rising.  Concerns of fire-sales and business closures, while existent the past few years, were not nearly as prevalent as many had commonly expected. 

With all this said, Lyn’s question still hangs out there … how have our clients weathered recent economic challenges?  The one observation that I can make across our entire client base is that those that figured out how to innovate are those that are thriving today.  Innovation has been a necessary survival skill, in turn making our clients’ operations more efficient and profitable.  Innovation in the market and to the benefit of one’s customers also continues to drive new revenues and profitability. Innovation is the one common denominator across all of our successful clients and is the one anchor point that continues to attract new investments from skilled (and perhaps lucky, too) investors.  

Thus, when I am asked by my clients what they can do to improve their business and increase the value of the enterprise, I like to turn the question back to them.  I challenge them to think about what they do today that they could do differently.  I challenge them to think about the markets they serve, and how they might serve them or others differently.  I challenge them to let go of preconceptions of how things “should be” or how “everyone else does it” and to think differently instead. 

So now the challenge goes out to everyone reading this today: what have you done to further innovation and increase the value of your enterprise? 

To learn more about Travis Drouin and MFA, go to www.mfa-cpa.com

March News

A New Identity

Administaff, Inc. announced, effective March 3, 2011, that it is changing its corporate identity and renaming the company Insperity, Inc. (NYSE: NSP), a leading provider of human resources (HR) and business performance solutions for America’s best businesses. This milestone reflects the company’s evolution over the past 25 years from a professional employer organization (PEO), an industry it pioneered, to its current position as a comprehensive business performance solutions provider helping companies run better, grow faster and make more money. 

 A Vision for Success
Every business begins as a vision – an inspiration – an idea that springs from the mind of an entrepreneur, a conversation between partners or the passion of a small group of like-minded individuals. It’s a dream of doing something no one’s ever done before – or doing something better than anyone ever has – creating a whole new industry or carving out a unique niche in established market.  Insperity has been a trusted advisor to those visionaries, helping America’s best business owners turn their dreams into reality. We appreciate that business owners to invest themselves completely in the success of their businesses, we understand the challenges they face as their businesses grow and change, and we have the knowledge and experience to keep them moving forward. That’s why more than 100,000 of America’s best businesses have chosen business performance solutions from Insperity. 

 A Mission of Prosperity
The mission of Insperity is to help businesses succeed so communities prosper. Our goal is to establish Insperity as the trusted advisor to performance-driven companies.  With Insperity, business owners excel, businesses thrive and communities are enriched.