|
Balanced Scorecard
Program Management
China
Knowledge Management
The Investor's Edge
Home
| |
Key Benefits
- Reduce investment risk
- Identify and prioritize infrastructure enhancements
- Upgrade negotiating position with investment partners
Components
Most investors evaluate three critical components prior to providing
capital:
- The Marketing Plan
- The Financial Position (Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow)
- Warrants and Obligations
These areas give you a good perspective on the goals and finances, but do
they tell you whether or not the company is capable of success? Our
position is that there are three additional components that must be evaluated
prior to investment:
- People
- Processes
- Infrastructure
- People Assessment
- So the company has a great marketing plan. Are the managers
"seasoned", or are they rank amateurs? Do they
understand their jobs? How do they communicate with each
other? How do they manage change in the marketplace? Are
they the sort of people you would choose to hire? How are they
compensated? In other words, is the workforce stable,
competent, and able to execute the marketing plan?
-
- We can develop an assessment of key
staff or departments, defining gaps in skills, training, and
competencies required to support the company's market vision.
-
- Process Assessment
- Take an order. Allocate resources to fulfill that order
(parts, people, etc.). Ship the order. Bill the
order. Manage the Customer experience "from cradle to
grave". These are typical processes that must be
established prior to satisfying a need in the marketplace. But
do they exist? Or, is the company locked into old, obsolete
processes that no longer meet the needs of the Customer?
- We can evaluate current processes, their
relationships with the technical infrastructure, and identify
opportunities for improvement. Also, for companies evaluating or
implementing automation (CRM, ERP, etc.), we can help ensure that they
aren't "automating a bad process".
-
- Infrastructure Assessment
- Can the company's servers handle the growth implied by the marketing
plan? Does the fulfillment system meet requirements for lot
tracking? Are invoices linked to Sales Rep compensation?
Do software development networks provide for off-site storage of
critical source code? Is there sufficient redundancy to manage
call-center overflow? Or, on the other hand, has the
company bought a Cadillac when a pickup truck would do?
-
- We can evaluate the technical
operations, hardware, software licensing and development
environment. We can assess a company's ability to support the
marketing vision through applications, hardware, and bandwidth.
With our People, Process, and Infrastructure
assessment, you'll know if the marketing plan is an executable document, or
merely represents the sort of fuzzy vision you get after too much sun ... In
other words, we can keep you from getting "burned".
If you're the one providing the capital, you can
negotiate terms from a position of strength, and you
can more effectively manage the risk of your investment.
If you're the one seeking investment
monies, you can
proactively address your weaknesses before they are uncovered. You may
determine that you're not ready for capital injection, or you may merely be
better informed as to how to use it. Either
way, you win.
|
