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Basic business services are common to all businesses. Successful financial operation is still measured in terms of the “bottom line”. Whether the business is privately held, a public corporation, a government agency, for profit, not for profit, a fund or a foundation,all must have the financial resources to produce and deliver goods and services, pay operating costs and provide an expected return on the investment of stakeholders.

Albeit, there are many different stakeholder motivations for contributing to the success of a business and many different expectations of return, the successful business will efficiently manage available financial resources and consistently meet stakeholder needs and expectations.

All businesses are composed of roughly the same functional elements:

• Operating revenue
• Sales
• Donations
• Fund raising
• Cost of goods and services
• Material
• Labor
• Overhead
• Expenses
• Sales, general and administrative
• Research
• Facilities and systems
• Return from operations
• For-profit enterprises – Profit or Loss
• Not-for-profit enterprises – Reinvestment or Deficit
• Return after taxes and interest
• “The Bottom Line”
• A percentage of operating revenue
• A metric that gauges stakeholder satisfaction

All businesses have stakeholders. The vision for the business is represented by the founder. The operational goals and objectives are represented by founder, managers and workers.

It is a successfully managed business when the operational goals and objectives are routinely achieved without overshadowing the vision. Many times the harried founder/manager spends all of his or her time as a slave to the bottom line fighting fires and overcoming obstacles and loses sight of the vision altogether. This is true in all sizes of business but it is often particularly so in smaller businesses where the founder/manager makes all of the business decisions without the benefit of peers, advisors or a board to counsel them.

D. L. Jones & Associates will participate with the founder and managers of a business as a trusted advisor to work together with them to assess the current state of the business and, when needed, put a recovery process in place to take non-performing businesses to profitable operations. We will evaluate the position of the business with regard to key areas such as:

• Cash
• Is it sufficient for day-to-day solvency?
• Is the management of accounts optimized?
• What sources of additional capital are accessible and justifiable?
• Revenue
• Is there a complete understanding of customer’s needs and expectations?
• Can the business fulfill on this need? At what cost? When?
• Is current product distribution appropriate? Sufficient? Optimized?
• Is marketing communications and sales support effective?
• People
• Are critical skills up to date?
• Is incompetence removed?
• Is process in place to guide and improve work habits?
• Is the workforce focused upon accountability?
• Training, organizational change and restructuring may all be used to achieve workforce goals
• Costs
• Where can the business remove procedural inefficiencies?
• Where can it eliminate operational redundancy?
• Where can it implement opportunities for automation?
• What are the alternative sources for cost effective labor?
• Time management
• What are the processes needed to efficiently manage the business?
• What software applications will provide the tools needed to control the business – financial management, MRP-II, supply chain, human resources, project management, …?
• What is the role and responsibility of every workgroup?
• What is the job description for every employee?

D. L. Jones & Associates will work with the founder/manager to do a thorough evaluation of the business. At that point, it is not our intention to write a report and leave. Rather, we want to work with the business to plan, schedule and take appropriate and effective actions that will take the business to profitability and relieve the burden of the founder/manager. We want to give the founder and managers the freedom to achieve the vision they had when they started their business.

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