Sustaining Growth – A Practical Example

In last week‘s posting (Sustaining Growth), I introduced a model that would allow a small business owner to understand how fast their company may grow without external financial inputs. In other words, how quickly can your business grow without running out of cash and without infusing new cash from equity or loans. In addition, the model also allows a small business owner to see how other changes and improvements might

The Allowable Growth Rate model that I introduced last week is:

AGR = Net Profit Margin x Rate of Retention x Asset Turnover x Leverage

Let’s take a look at an example: a small business has sales of $900,000, with Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) of $350,000, Sales and General Administration (SG&A) costs of $400,000 for a Net Profit of $150,000. In addition, the company’ owner pays a dividends $100,000 to investors. The business has Capital of $450,000, of which $300,000 is debt and the rest equity.

 AGR   =   16.7%    x    33.3%   x   2   x   2   =  22.2%

AGR     =     $900,000     x     22.2%     =     $200,000

Simply put, with retained earnings of $50,000 (after dividends), the company turns assets over 2 times a year, and has leverage of 2, meaning that internal operations will allow the company to turn the $50,000 of retained earnings into $200,000 of new sales without external funds.

Supposing, however, that the product or service that the company sells has made a hit in the marketplace, and sales could grow much more quickly than that. If the company expands more rapidly, they will be pinched by a lack of capital to sustain the growth.

If it is possible to make improvements internally, you should try. For example, if the company can decrease Cost of Goods Sold, Sales or General Administration Expenses, each dollar saved would be another dollar to be reinvested into the business, all things being equal. For example, a decrease in COGS and SG&A of just 5% would increase Net Profit and AGR as follows

AGR   =   20.8%   x   46.7%   x   2   x   2   =   38.9%

AGR     =     $900,000     x     38.9%     =     $350,000

You could also analyze other operations. What if the company could use its assets more efficiently, thus increasing capital turnover? This would allow them to create more sales with the same assets, thus increasing AGR, again without external financial inputs. The following example assumes that the company is able to increase asset turnover from 2 to 3, increasing revenue to $1,350,000. We also assume that COGS and SG&A will increase by roughly 1/3, as would dividends. The resulting equation for AGR is

AGR   =   27.8%   x   65.3%    x   3   x   2   =   108.9%

AGR     =     $900,000     x     108.9%     =     $1,470,000

Of course, not every company is simply going to increase asset turnover by 50%, but this illustrates how internal change can have a significant effect on financial performance. In reality, you would always want to look at improvement in internal operations as a way to increase AGR, before looking at external financial inputs, such as debt or equity. If you were to seek external financing, a good investor or bank partner is going to want to look at improvements anyway.

Next week, we will have another practical example looking at how increasing debt or equity financing could affect Allowable Growth Rate.

Sustaining Growth

Every business owner wants to be successful; or at least all of the business owners I know do. However, there are a significant number of businesses that do not succeed in the long term because of how well they succeed in the short run. Most often, this is because the business grows more quickly than their cash flow allows (see Its Cash That Counts and A Simple Tool to Calculate and Track Cash Flow). Adequate cash flow is vital to the success of any business, and it is possible to analyze your company’s financials in order to predict the rate of growth that your cash flow allows.

Allowable Growth Rate will tell you how fast your company may grow without changing any external financial inputs, such as increasing equity financing or loans. The lesson here is to know what your company’s allowable growth rate is without such financial adjustments and then be ready to apply the adjustments when needed. Negotiate the additional equity or loan before you need it!

This posting will look at the Allowable Growth Rate Formula, and next week will follow with a practical example. Here is the formula for Allowable Growth Rate:

AGR = Net Profit Margin  X  Rate of Retention  X  Asset Turnover  X  Leverage

Net Profit Margin: The first term of the formula is simply the percentage of your net profit, which is Net Income divided by Revenues. The formula presumes that the first source of operating cash is your company’s profits. Recall that I mentioned above that this formula addresses the allowable growth rate without external financial inputs. If your company does not yet have net profit, you will automatically need external financial inputs in order to operate at all, let alone grow.

Retention Rate: Retention rate refers to the amount of Net Profit that is retained within the company. For example, the company may be obligated to pay a dividend out of profits, or as the owner, you do not take any personal salary until after all other expenses are met. The retention rate is calculated by dividing the amount of profit retained in the company by the total of net profit.

Asset Turnover: Asset turnover refers to the number of times in a year that your company uses a dollar to move its operations forward. It is calculated by dividing the company’s Total Assets from the Balance Sheet by Revenues. Asset Turnover is a way of looking at how efficient your company is with its resources. This is important for determining your company’s growth rate: the more efficient that your company uses its resources, the greater the allowable growth rate.

Leverage: Although not everyone agrees with me when I state it like this, but Leverage basically tells us who owns what in a company (see DuPont Analysis: Capital, Debt and Equity). If the total capital in a company is $150,000, and the owner’s equity is $100,000, then that means that there is also $50,000 in debt (belonging to the bank or other individual or entity). In this case, capital divided by equity equals 1.5. Debt is used as a lever to increase the amount of capital available to operate the company. In many small companies, there is no leverage because the company has not taken on debt.

Next week, a practical application of the formula.

Effective, Efficient, Repeatable Processes

There are times, when dealing with different situations in business, when I remind myself that patience is a virtue. I ran into one of those times recently, though I will not release any names in order to protect the guilty! In this case, not only is patience a virtue, but the creation and maintenance of effective, efficient, repeatable and most of all, documented processes could have saved a large amount of virtue expended on my part!

Whether your business is large or small, when you reinvent the wheel with every new business opportunity, you are wasting precious resources. Even worse, when process is informal and undocumented, you could be wasting the precious time of a client or a vendor. This is essentially what happened to me. Had I known what was expected of me when interacting with this vendor, we could have been much more efficient. Imagine what might have happened if vendor employees had known what to do as well.

The first quality of a good business process is to be effective. In other words, the process is intended to accomplish something specific and is designed to do so. Forgive the old adage, but if you don’t know where you are going, you are very likely to wind up there! When designing process, always begin with the end in mind, and be certain through testing that the process actually accomplishes what is intended.

The second quality of a good business process is to be efficient. This means that the process should only include only those inputs, outputs and steps that are absolutely necessary to accomplish the end in mind. Many of us have a natural tendency towards complexity and we must resist at all costs. When you are creating business process, ask at each step along the way, “Is this really necessary?”  Think of the other person, be they client or vendor, carrying out the process; will they be muttering under their breath as to why they must perform this action?

The third quality of a good business process is to be repeatable. As mentioned above, the height of inefficiency is to do the same thing a different way every time (or was that insanity?). A process that is repeatable will gradually build up a body of experience that will help to increase efficiency and reduce performance time.

The fourth quality of a good business process is to be documented. What others don’t know they cannot follow! If a process lives only in someone’s mind, then there will be a constant battle to get the process done well. Of course, there are those who would like to preserve their position by keeping control, but that rarely works in the long run.

A final lesson here: a truly agile business will also have a process that handles exceptions to the rule. When an effective, efficient, repeatable and documented process produces an unexpected result, business agility requires that another process be available to handle the exception.

These simple, common sense ideas can keep all of us from expending too much of the virtue of patience!

Kafka Revisited (Or How Not to Give Good Customer service)

Over the last couple of months, I have been dealing with a government agency that will remain unnamed. Over the course of my dealings with the agency, I began to feel like Josef K. the main character of Kafka’s novel, The Trial. Josef K. had been arrested, but all during the legal process, nobody ever told him why, or what was going on.

After each call with a Customer Service Representative of the agency, I, like Josef K., have felt more confused and frustrated than before. Based on this experience, I would like to give you some rules on how not to give good customer service.

• Give incomplete or misleading information. Never give a customer the complete set of information that they need to know, although it is all right to let them believe that they do have that information at the end of the call. If you are a big company, chances are when they call back they will speak to someone else.
• Berate the customer. Tell the customer that they should have known that information already. Make them feel that they are stupid for not knowing the information in the first place and should not have called (forget that if all the customers did know already, you might not have a job!).
• Send the customer in circles. Tell the customer that you are not in the correct department to help. Be sure to send them to a department that cannot help them, and will insist that they call your department back.
• Keep the customer waiting. Put the customer on hold for long periods of time with awful music and the occasional announcement that “Your call is important to us!” Hang up on the customer from time to time.
• Don’t call back. When the customer asks for your supervisor, tell them that your supervisor is busy, but will call them back in a few minutes if the customer will leave a name and number. Be sure to lose the name and number immediately after you hang up.
• Play on the customer’s emotions. Always tell the customer that you understand why they may be upset then do everything you can to aggravate them further.

There is an old saying, “Those that don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”  I would like to make a modification of that saying to, “Those that don’t know literature are doomed to repeat it.” For the last few weeks I have asked each customer service representative at this agency if they had ever heard of Franz Kafka. Not a single one did!

Genial Relationships and a High Performing Management Team

There comes a time in the life of many small companies when outstanding performance leads to growth. The small company no longer consists of the founder and a handful of employees. At some point, it becomes apparent that the founder cannot manage every aspect of operations, much as they would like. The company now needs a management team.

Forming any management team, let alone a high performing management team, is a challenging task. What follows is not a complete guide to the process of forming a management team, but a few ideas that I believe may be lost along the way. Among them are: a genial relationship among managers and commitment by the managers to each other, and to the company.

In the age of demanding executives, it would seem that the way that people relate to each other is less important than it might have been one time. I don’t have to mention names for anyone to think of one executive or another that is highly demanding with their team and less than cordial when their demands are not met. Despite the fame of these highly successful people, I believe it to be the exception rather than the rule.

In the instance of a small company management team, I believe that a “genial relationship” among the team is a crucial element to be high performing. Now, I don’t expect that a management team will restrict their social circle to the team, nor that every member of the team must be best friends, but I do believe that if any member of the team is not well disposed to every other, then there will be problems. By genial, I do mean that when members know each other, their strengths, weaknesses and style, it is much easier to develop the cohesiveness necessary to be high performing.

That is where commitment comes in. I do not describe commitment as a general feeling that one has towards others, but rather the specific things that each member of the team commits to one another and to the company. For example, the management team members must commit to clear communication with one another. Finding out about problems indirectly can be the cause of dissension on a team, so each member ought to commit to going directly to another team member when there is a problem. When team members know each other well and share a genial relationship, it is possible that communication can concentrate on a problem, rather than a person.

Management team members ought to commit to the company strategy. This does not mean that there should not be discussion or disagreement on the development of the strategy, but that such discussion, disagreement and eventual consensus around strategy should focus on the business, not the relationships among the management team.

Finally, management team members ought to commit to the success of each other and the recognition to each other’s success. Becoming successful by pulling another team member down is rarely the path to long-term success for oneself. Helping another team member that is struggling strengthens the whole team. Success is rarely a one person achievement, so that recognizing the participation of another management team member and their employees in one’s own success will lead to a more sound management team.

Unintended Consequences

Business agility demands that a business be ready to react quickly to their environment in order to take advantage of change. However, there are times when a fast change results in unintended consequences. Many are the stories of plans gone awry, even when well researched and grounded in fact. All the more reason not to make snap decisions that can take your business in the wrong direction. Here are some questions that can help you discern the difference.

Are we equipped to handle the change? There are many companies that are the victim of their own success. Something that seems like a good idea turns out to be a great idea, to the point that the company is unable to keep up with demand. Before making a change or introducing a new product or service you need to ask several questions. The first is about volume, do you have the infrastructure to keep up demand? The second is about resources, do you have the people to keep up with the demand.

What would we do if demand was 2 times what you predict? 10 times? 100 times? Using hypothetical numbers allows you to analyze what effect different scenarios might have on your business. You may discover that up to a certain point, you can handle the new business or increased volume that a change may foster, but nothing beyond that point. If that is the case, you may want to introduce the change or new product to a smaller segment of your clients or the market.

Is the change based on fact or a hunch? It is true that there are those that can study a market and get a “gut-level” sense of what is going on. Generally speaking, I would not believe that of myself, and you should be skeptical as well. Is your hunch based on research and data, or is it based on anecdotal evidence but not supported by more extensive research? Getting to market with a new product or service includes doing a certain amount of research to back up the hunch.

Do you have a Plan B? If the new product or service does become successful beyond what you can handle, do you have a Plan B in place? Plan B can include outsourcing on a temporary basis, or using temporary staff to fill in. Be ready for success beyond what you predict.

These simple questions can help your business avoid unintended consequences on the road to success.

Resolve to Follow Your Cash Flow

I saw an interesting saying on a sign the other day, “New Year’s Resolutions, they go in one year and out the next.” That is my philosophy as well when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions. Yet, as a business owner, there is one resolution that ought to be made for the coming year: pay attention to your cash flow.

Most small business owners review their Profit and Loss Statement (hereafter P&L) more or less regularly, but often forget that the bottom line of a P&L is an accounting number. That is, the net profit on a P&L does not take into consideration the timing of cash flows. The business owner will look at the P&L and see a great number, then look at their bank account and say, “Where’s the money?” There are a number of reasons why those numbers may be different.

First, take into account the credit you extend to your customers, also known as receivables. If you have booked sales in a given month, but the actual payment is coming 30, 60 or 90 days in the future, your bank account will not reflect that fact. If you picture your sales as coins flowing into a bucket, any sale made on credit actually has an IOU on it instead of a dollar sign.

Secondly, take into account the credit your suppliers and vendors extend to you, also known as payables. For example, If you look at a P&L that contains cash that will not be paid until 30, 60 or 90 days into the future and do not take that into account, your cash on hand will be inflated beyond what it really is. If you spend those committed dollars on something else, such as payroll, and then have a problem with cash inflow, you might not be able to meet those supplier and vendor obligations when they come around.

The best way to avoid this problem is with a Cash Flow document that takes into account the timing of cash flows. The cash flow document will not register sales for a given month, but the actual cash inflow. The document will not register purchases of goods or services, but the actual cash outflow in a given month. The Cash Flow document should also show the recurring monthly cash outflows for payroll, rent and other expenses. By creating a cash flow document that moves into the future at least 6 months, you will be much better able to predict what cash you will need in any given month in order to cover all of the cash outflows.

Resolving to follow your cash flow in 2013 is one resolution that you can’t afford not to make!

Great Customer Service is No Accident

Nothing brings out the bulldog in me more quickly than poor customer service. Recently, the bulldog has had too many occasions to come out! In one case, a company website where I was trying to pay a bill was not working. The site was quite rudimentary for a $6 billion dollar company, with no help function at all. When I called the only number listed on the site, I went through the “pass you on” routine, with lots of hold time during which I was told how important I was to their company.  Finally, I reached the office of the right person to talk to, but she was on vacation. I sincerely hoped that she would make it back from vacation else I might never be able to pay my bill online (or anyone else, for that matter).

In another instance, a well-known delivery company left me a form to sign to have a package delivered on the second attempt. I even called the company to let them know that they could leave the package in the foyer and that I would sign the form. The next day, I found a second form next to the first. When I called this time, the customer service person could not tell me what happened and passed me on to the local terminal.

After a couple of tries, and more messages about how important I was, I reached the terminal manager. The manager explained to me that company regulations did not allow them to leave the package in the foyer of my condo. To put a quick end to the story, about fifteen minutes later when I removed my teeth from his leg (figuratively, of course), he agreed to have the package left as I had requested.

Customer service should be in the DNA of every company, and it does not happen by accident. Based on my experience, both as a customer and as a service provider, here are some guidelines to great customer service:

1. Every employee of a company is potentially a customer service agent. Even amid the myriad choices in a company’s voice response system many people get through to one employee or another. Therefore, all employees must be trained and ready to handle customer service at a triage level, that is, be able to understand the problem and get the customer to the right place the first time.
2. There should never be a circumstance where the only person who can solve the problem is not there. When there is a technical problem, multiple experts must be on hand. For a small company, this may mean having experts on call. With today’s technology, reaching a person who can solve a problem should not be a problem.
3. Customer service representatives must be given reasonable authority to solve a problem. Repeating company policy is not a solution. Nor is saying, “My supervisor is not here right now, he will call you back.”
4. At the very least, customer service representatives, supervisors and managers must learn how to ask questions and listen, not only to understand the problem, but ascertain what the solution is that the customer wants.

Finally, a suggestion to all companies: please stop using the “your call is important to us” routine!

Tragedy in Connecticut

As a person who grew up in Connecticut, I have been as shocked as others from the horrific event in Newtown, Connecticut. I offer my sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the people of Newtown.

DuPont Analysis: A Practical Example

The previous Blogs in this series introduced you to the DuPont Analysis; this offering will take up a practical example of how a DuPont Analysis can help you understand the state of a business. The subject of the analysis is a small company that manufactures medical devices of different sorts.  This study uses financials from 2011, at which time the company was about a $1.6 million company. To view or download the DuPont pyramid with pertinent numbers go to this  LINK.

I have discovered that people often feel that financial analysis must be quite complex. Well, yes and no. Large companies with complex business structures can be time consuming to analyze. However, in my experience, small business analysis does not need to be complex at all. As a matter of fact, the problems that a small company may be experiencing are not usually very difficult to pinpoint through financial analysis. The example that follows should give you a feel for the relative simplicity of analysis. Of course, if the numbers themselves are off, so will the analysis, but for the sake of example, the numbers presented in this analysis are accurate.

At the top of the pyramid we have a Return on Equity of 25%. In other words, for every $100 of equity invested in the company, there is a return of $25. Now, how are we to interpret that? There are several aspects to consider. If the company was expecting a 15% return, they are doing quite well. On the other hand, if they were expecting 35%, not so well. The previous year Return on Equity was 26%, which gives you one clue, meaning that the current year is down just a bit. However, the current year’s revenues are up by 16%, so there may be something amiss.

In order to understand better we must go deeper into the pyramid. Return on Capital is 23% with leverage at 1.09, meaning that the small load of debt that the company is carrying is actually improving return on equity (23% X 1.09 = 25%). So the problem is not that the company is over leveraged. As we continue down the left hand side, Net Profit Margin at 23%, Operating Profit margin at 30% and Gross Profit Margin at 72% all seem to indicate that the company has cost under control. On the other hand, perhaps the company could boost returns by increasing leverage. Using debt to increase capital for the purpose of increasing investment might be an option.

When we look at the Total Asset Turnover Ratio (also known as Capital Turnover Ratio), we begin to see the tip of an iceberg peaking above the water. The 1.0 indicates that the company is probably not using capital efficiently. At 1.0, the company is turning each dollar of capital over once a year. So, before the company goes looking for increased debt, they must discover why their use of capital is not more efficient.

We can see that Working Capital Turnover is just over 2, which could be an indication of where the rest of the iceberg is hiding. Working Capital is the amount of investment that is used to keep the company operating. It includes inventory, payables and receivables. Another way that this is expressed is in the Cash Cycle, how many days does it take to circulate a dollar in the process of creating a product, collecting that dollar from clients and paying to vendors.

As we can see, in the pyramid, this company’s cash cycle is 613 days long. Of that cycle, inventory is 554 days. This means that  it takes the company 555 days to circulate a dollar in their production and sales process, including both raw materials and parts purchased from vendors, work in process materials that are unfinished products and inventory both on the company’s shelves waiting to go out  or already on a distributor’s shelf waiting to be sold.

The real problem facing the company is that they are tying up capital in their inventory, making it difficult to deploy that capital for other reasons. For example, if their sales were to create a breakthrough, and they required additional manufacturing capacity, it would be difficult to do without taking on additional loans. But, would they want to take on increased debt when their use of that debt is so inefficient.

The real key is how to shorten their production and sales cycle, so as not to tie up large amounts of capital. The solutions could be improved manufacturing methods such as the use of Just in Time, better forecasting the marketplace for demand and paying closer attention to the inventory on distributor’s shelves. The company would do well to fix this problem before it became an even greater challenge, impeding future growth. In addition to fixing the problem, the company needs to monitor the level of both inventory and working capital closely, to guard against future reoccurrence.

As you can see, understanding the way that financial reports give a vision into the state of a company is not all that difficult. Using the tried and true DuPont Method will afford you that vision into the state of your company, and is well worth the time spent to produce the numbers that “don’t lie”!