The national unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. In Colorado, the unemployment rate is even lower than the national rate. Great news! Right? If you’re looking to hire talented people, you’ve probably felt some pain trying to recruit in this 50-year record low unemployment climate. And if the employee-benefits package you’re offering hasn’t changed since the last time the unemployment rate was this low, you’re probably also experiencing record-low recruiting results and record-high employee turnover.

When talented candidates are choosing among which jobs to apply for and which offers to accept, it usually comes down to something other than the salary. Salaries are important, but in today’s market salary is only the door-opener. Offering an interesting and competitive benefits package is crucial to attracting and keeping employees who are engaged, focused, and interested in being part of where you and your company are trying to go.

If your company is like most, spending on employee benefits is one of the 3 or 4 biggest numbers on your profit and loss statement. What can you do when you’re already spending that much on employee benefits, yet the people you’re trying to recruit don’t seem attracted by what you’re offering? And who has the time to sift through all the benefit plans that are out there, decide on a plan, and help your employees understand and make the most out of it? For some expert advice on these questions, I turned to my friend Todd Krapf, an employee-benefits specialist at Alliant Insurance.

Todd, who has been in the insurance business his entire career and has lived in Denver for the most-recent 15 of those years, works collaboratively with his clients to develop benefits strategies that match budgets with attractive benefits designed to attract and engage employees. He says, “We create benefits that enhance the culture of the company and add value for the employees.” Todd’s goal is to know what benefits “move the needle” of satisfaction and give value to employees so that they see their company as an employer-of-choice. By becoming an employer-of-choice, the company isn’t faced with much employee disengagement, frustration, or high turnover.

At the outset, Todd asks a couple of important questions: “What do employees get for investing part of their lives in your company?” and “Are you getting the biggest bang for your employee benefits buck?” Todd also finds out where you may be experiencing recruiting, retention, morale, or productivity problems. He analyzes claims data and your existing benefits plans. Next, he meets with as many of your team members as possible to talk about goals and objectives, what’s working and what isn’t, and budgets. After gathering as much information as you can share, Todd and his team work with you to develop ideas and strategy.

When helping clients craft benefit plans that employees value, Todd’s not limited to standard medical, dental, and vision plans. He’s well-versed in creative solutions that help his clients offer things their employees value, like training, professional and personal development, recognition, parental leave, daycare, health savings accounts, transportation, wealth planning, and student loan repayment programs. Todd looks for creative ways to help clients differentiate themselves and meet their employees’ needs. For example, many younger workers owe student loan debt, and Todd has developed partnerships that provide creative payroll-deduction and employee loyalty programs that help employees retire student loan debt.

Todd’s goal is to understand and address what is valuable to the employee. Todd’s team recently began working with a client whose employees, on average, are 26 years old. While going through his discovery process with the client, Todd concluded that income protection is very important to the company’s young employees. Todd and his team worked together with the client to offer paid family leave when an employee is blessed by the birth or adoption of a baby, regardless of whether the employee is the mother or the father. They also created wellness savings accounts that allow employees to use contributions to buy fitness memberships, ski passes, race entries, or other wellness related perks.

Doesn’t this all cost money? Yes, but it doesn’t have to cost more money. Todd’s client, who employs about 70 people, offered a basic life insurance plan and a medical plan that did not include dental or vision benefits. Todd analyzed the market and the plans, and by strategically changing the existing plans significantly reduced the premiums. Todd advised the client to use the premium savings to offer dental and vision benefits, and he advised letting employees purchase benefits for their spouses and children. Todd and his team explained the improvements to the employees, who easily recognized the extra value the employer was giving them – all without increased benefits spending.

Cost doesn’t always mean spending. Todd helped a client recover from the bad decisions of a prior owner who was focused on spending the least amount possible and who created a plan that attracted only the employees who had no other options. Todd recommended a plan that offered a smaller provider network than the existing plan but had lower premiums, a lower deductible, and lower out-of-pocket maximum liability and included co-pays for office visits and prescriptions drugs. Due to the changes, employee participation in the plans increased by 38%, but more importantly employee turnover fell by 40%. The recruiting, onboarding, and training savings were more than the cost of the added benefits. In addition, the company is achieving greater results because of higher employee satisfaction.

Client service doesn’t stop when you’ve announced the plan, though. Todd and his team help explain to employees the value they should receive and help them get the most from the benefits you’re offering. Todd and his team act as advocates for their clients and their clients’ employees. They will handle claim issues on behalf of your company, help your employees in their interactions with the benefits providers, and even help with compliance. They look for ways to help you and your staff do more with less.

When looking for a benefits broker, Todd suggests looking for someone who wants to understand your goals, your company, and your company’s culture. Your broker should be innovative and creative, and they should want to get to know you well so that they can customize offerings and provide valuable solutions. The broker should be able to put themselves in your shoes and figure out the benefits that are most likely to have a positive impact on the company’s culture.

Todd recommends using an employee benefits broker, and this isn’t just because he is one! In Colorado’s small-group fully-insured market (this means companies with fewer than 100 employees), insurance premiums don’t change regardless of whether the client is represented by a broker or not. A broker can save the client lots of time and hassle, and a good broker brings industry know-how and insider-access. You’ll also want to give the broker enough lead time to gain knowledge about your company and understand your goals so that they can make effective recommendations before the start of an enrollment period. Ideally, six months is the lead time needed to go through Todd’s discovery process and allow Todd and his team to provide the best service.

Lots of employee benefits companies use a producer to attract new clients, who are then handed-off to someone else after the sale has been made. With Todd’s team, Todd not only attracts clients but also stays with them throughout the relationship. Todd’s clients engage him to bring ideas, and the most productive relationships are with clients who are open with him and are willing to consider new ideas. “I’ve got a lot of experience,” Todd says, “so earning the client’s trust and learning about them helps me do the best possible job for them.” As an owner himself, Todd can make decisions without having to ask for permission. This also lets Todd focus on serving clients that strive to be an employer of choice.

If you’re interested in learning more or want to get in touch with Todd, please call me and I’ll be honored to connect you.

I’ve helped lots of clients sell their businesses, but before we got started many of those clients felt too overwhelmed to even begin the process. Many business owners are stretched by the normal, day-to-day demands of running a business, and adding a major project like an exit or succession transaction can be too much to even consider. Some of these clients didn’t have a realistic idea about what their business was worth or how to negotiate a fair price. The business was typically among the most important parts of their lives and their biggest asset, and uncertainty about the effort it would take, the cost of selling, and whether they’d attract a good price created lots of anxiety and stress.

For some calm, sober reflection about the process of selling or transitioning a business, I turned to my good friend Ken Galecki, owner of Galecki & Associates Business Brokers, LLC. Ken has owned and sold several businesses, and he says he liked selling them better than he liked owning them. Ken may be a “deal junkie” because of his passion for helping clients sell their businesses, and he says that communication is the key to a successful deal and transition because selling a business is disruptive.

Start by Taking a Vacation?

Business sellers are typically at a turning point in their lives and careers – they may be retiring, ready to spend more time with their families, ready for a change in lifestyle, passing the family business on to their children, or just tired of managing employees. Ken suggests starting the process by taking a month off. While a vacation might be a welcome treat, the point is to test whether the business continues to operate without suffering losses in operational or financial performance while the owner is absent.

Ken asks prospective sellers about their last vacation as soon as he meets them. He also asks how many hours per week they typically work. The answers to these questions give Ken lots of information whether their business is ready to go to market. Ken says, “I have the best job because I get to learn about all these different businesses,” and, “I know a little about a lot.” “There’s nothing more gratifying than helping people take this step into the next stage of their lives.”

If a business isn’t quite ready for market, Ken helps identify the areas that need attention to make the business sellable. In many cases, having well-performing, key personnel in place is a starting point. Prospective buyers should easily conclude that you’re not needed for the business to succeed. Next, being precise about recording only income and expenses received or incurred exclusively for the business is also a focus. Most buyers grow apprehensive about, or even suspicious of, sellers who can’t demonstrate solid, bottom-line results without add-backs and excuses.

When he takes a business to market, Ken interviews the owner about the company’s history and what the owner’s average day looks like. He assembles a presentation package for use with prospective buyers, and he insists that the seller approve the package before its release. One of the ways Ken attracts the best offers is by being very intentional about the prospects to whom he markets the business. He personally sends email and follows-up, preferring to focus on a few pre-vetted buyers with whom he typically connects through online inquiries, word-of-mouth, and maintaining an established-buyer database. Depending on the response, Ken may market the business more actively by advertising on four different websites or direct mail to industry buyers.

Ken does homework on prospective buyers. He pre-clears all prospects with the seller, being cautious to counsel the seller about the pros and cons of marketing the business to competitors, and he’s well aware that some business owners have strong ideas or preferences about who they are willing to sell their business to. If they’re qualified and if the seller approves, Ken gets a confidentiality agreement from the buyer and starts serious discussions about the transaction. The prospect may receive general financial information at this stage.

When a buyer is serious, Ken helps negotiate a letter of intent or a term sheet. Many intermediaries will tell the buyer and seller that due diligence can start at this point, but Ken counsels that due diligence should not start until the buyer and seller have signed a definitive, binding agreement. Many deals never make it to the definitive agreement stage, and many prospective sellers have devoted a lot of effort and money, some even having disclosed sensitive information, prematurely by not waiting for a buyer who is ready to sign a binding agreement.

Don’t Book the Cruise Yet!

What surprises will there be before the transaction closes? Ken start and ends with thorough communication, letting the owner know what’s going on and why. Ken says that the owner’s initial excitement about the sale is often extinguished by the effort the seller has to devote to the process or by something going wrong during the process. He cautions that most sellers experience “process exhaustion” and that things go wrong in lots of transactions.

Ken stresses that part of an intermediary’s function is to handle the issues and keep the process on track. Perhaps the most sensitive part of the process involves introducing the buyer to key employees. Ken says it’s also the intermediary’s job to manage the process so that the buyer gains confidence that the business will continue to succeed after the closing while not destroying the business before that happens.

After the sale is closed, you, as the seller, should expect to help the buyer transition and help the business continue to succeed. Many of Ken’s clients provide thirty to sixty days of “familiarization” services after the sale to show the buyer the ropes. Many, if not most, transactions include seller-financing of ten to twenty percent of the sales price in form of a “seller-carry” note that will be paid, usually in monthly installments, after the closing. You will want to help the buyer get off to a good start and position them for continued success so that you receive all these payments. The buyer is also likely to ask you to promise not to compete with the business you’re selling for a period of time and not to woo any employees away from the business.

Why hire an intermediary like Ken? Intermediaries help maintain confidentiality and minimize disruption. Employees, vendors, and competitors should learn about a pending, or completed, transaction only at the right times. An intermediary should help you appropriately value the company to attract serious interest at the highest price. An intermediary should be equipped to negotiate a sale for more cash at closing and minimize the risk that the buyer won’t be able to completely pay a seller-carry note. A good intermediary can help you avoid disruption, continue to grow your business during the process, and attract a good sale price – all of which can add up to more than the fee, which is typically around ten percent of the sale price.

Ken credits among his biggest successes some transactions that didn’t result in immediate sales. For example, Ken was asked to list a landscaping business that would sell immediately for about $700,000.  When Ken helped the owner clarify that the business was capable of generating $350,000 cash every year, was an easy to run business with little stress, and that the owner felt energetic about holding the business, they agreed to delay the listing for up to five years. The delay should allow the owner to accumulate about $1.75 million from the business and then sell it in several years for an additional $700,000-$1 million.

Another of Ken’s “success by not selling” examples involves a plumbing company whose owner was so central to its success that an immediate sale would be difficult or impossible. Ken advised this owner to, among other things, hire a general manager, delegate tasks, and focus on customer service. After only a few short months, the owner decided not to list the business for sale, telling Ken, “I did all the things you suggested and now I love my business! I don’t want to sell!”

This may seem like I’m suggesting that an intermediary shouldn’t be focused on selling your business. While this isn’t true, examples like these may show that the intermediary has your interests, and not only a success fee, at heart.

So, what should you look for in a business intermediary? When choosing an intermediary, Ken recommends that you ask for references. Call them and discuss their experience having gone through the process. Ask about feedback they’ve gotten from their attorneys, accountants, and other advisors who interacted with the intermediary. You should hear good feedback about communication the intermediary provided, trust that the intermediary generated, and the intermediary’s persistence. Be sure to ask whether the intermediary charges up-front advisory fees.

A profitable business with clean financial records is the best candidate for an immediate sale. An owner who is motivated to sell is a plus, but to Ken “motivated” doesn’t mean “burnt-out.” It means someone who has a sense of urgency. Ken will consider listing less-than-optimal businesses for sale if he concludes he can help the owner, but Ken won’t list a business he doesn’t think he can sell. Ken says he focusses on these transactions because they let him act more like a consultant instead of a transaction broker.

If you’d like to meet Ken, or if you’d like some ideas about candidates with these skills to serve on your advisory team, please feel free to call me at 303-831-1411.

Whatever business you may be in, you’re probably an expert.  You know what you offer and how to deliver it in ways your clients value.  You know what it takes to make your clients happy.  But when it comes to managing dollars and cents, does your expertise fall short?  Many business leaders understand “doing” business much better than financing a business.  You probably ask questions like:  Am I ready to expand?  How long will the money last?  And what will I have to do to get more?

I reached out to my friend Michele Demark of Decision Smart, Inc. to discuss her views on these and other finance-related questions that small and mid-sized businesses like the clients I serve in my practice face.  Michele’s company offers “fractional” Chief Financial Officer services, which means that Michele’s firm can deliver expertise in a serving size that most businesses will appreciate.

Michele’s firm typically begins a new engagement functioning more like a chief of staff than as CFO.  She says that most business owners try to divide their attention among lots of important demands.  It probably seems like everyone wants something from you.  Michele believes that it’s important to know what YOU want.  This conversation helps you know what’s already working well and figure out what really needs your attention.

Michele described how many of her clients were too deeply involved in keeping the machines running to see the bigger picture of where the business was at the time and where it might be going.  Michele offers an outsider’s view that helps the owner decide where to best devote their attention and energy.  When they’ve answered the question about what they want, Michele helps the owner figure out how to get there and when to bring in other experts. “I bring a roster with me instead of bringing the whole squad,” she says, “because every client’s needs are different.”

The kick-off conversation shouldn’t focus on only the short-term.  Michele points out that “At some point, you’ll transition away from or out of your company.  Given that all roads lead to this destination, you need to ask yourself if you were buying this business five or twenty-five years from now, what would you want to see?”  With the end-game in mind, Michele helps clients define want they want their business to look like and then helps them structure the business to arrive at the goal.

The next step almost always includes a review and evaluation of financial statements and data-collection and reporting systems.  Michele described her company’s experience helping clients who were collecting information but not using it well or who had good reporting systems but weren’t using them correctly or fully.  Some clients didn’t have systems that were right for their business, and some clients didn’t have any systems at all.  Lots of clients had systems that were too advanced for the skill levels of the people using them.  Some clients collected data and created reports manually – and expensively.  Others used systems that gobbled up staff time, taking more money and effort than they were designed to save.  By helping optimize systems, Michele’s company got these businesses on the right track for growth.

Michele asks a series of questions when looking at a company’s reporting systems to figure out the best course of action:

• What do you need to have the system do?
• Are you fully utilizing the systems you already have in place and is the staff using them?
• Have you outgrown your systems, and what should you consider before replacing them?

With answers to these questions, Michele helps her clients put in place data collection and reporting systems that generate meaningful reports, and with useful, meaningful information Michele helps her clients make good decisions.

OK, you’re gathering data, reviewing reports, and making good decisions.  Time for a break, right?  Probably not a bad idea, provided that you’re not bouncing checks while you’re enjoying a tall one.  A CFO should be forecasting your cash flow and preventing these unwanted surprises.  The forecasts should look ahead to the next six months to three years, and a good forecast will take into account the owner’s view of the future.

Forecasts like these will make your life less stressful and more enjoyable.  For example, Michele knows that banks like to loan money to be used for buying hard assets but are not so excited to lend for brand expansion.  Her client had enough cash on-hand to buy the equipment needed to produce a new product line but using the cash for the equipment would make getting a loan to pay for the product launch campaign uncertain.  Needless to say, this dilemma was creating stress.  With Michele’s help, the client borrowed the funds to buy the equipment instead of using the cash on-hand, leaving the cash for the launch campaign and making both the bank and the client happy.

Michele finds that most businesses, including businesses with limited cash, overspend what’s been budgeted for a project and generate less revenue than what they’d planned.  Her focus, therefore, is on results.  She uses tools like key performance indicators and stage-gate processes to ensure that clients get results.

In the first step of a stage gate process, Michele helps set milestones that must be reached before the project moves forward.  For example, she might help the client set a goal for the sales team to identify a certain number of prospects.  The sales team must complete this stage before the client allows the project to proceed to the next step, which might be contacting the prospects and getting a minimum number of committed customers.  Because it’s based on results, the stage gate process helps the client know that the project is on track to achieve the goal.

Michele offered a few suggestions that business owners should be factoring into their forecasts:

• Interest expense should be on your radar.
• Employee pay and benefits continue to be an issue because of the talent shortage.
• Even with the new lower tax rates, continue to optimize tax expense.

Michele says that, more than anything, her goal is to help her clients succeed.  Her excitement describing how she helped her clients shows that she finds her clients fascinating, and she says that she loves what her clients create.  “These folks all have something that they believe in,” she says of her clients.

If you’d like to learn more about Michele and her services, please reach out to me.  I’d be honored to connect you.

What’s the most important asset of your business?  How about its biggest potential liability?  The answer to both questions, for most business owners, is “people.”

How can you protect your most important asset?  What can you do to attract, qualify, train, energize, and retain the best people?  While you’re doing that, how will you be sure you’re checking all the boxes and filing all the forms that the government wants, much less the stuff that your lawyer and your accountant “recommend?”  Oh, and how will you provide your employees with the information and access to the resources that they’ll need to administer their pay and benefits?  Equally or more importantly, where will you find the time to do all this, bro?

According to a recent Business News Daily report, “A Guide to PEOs and Employee Leasing” (February 27, 2018), over 150,000 small businesses have turned to a “pro” for help with these tasks – a professional employer organization (the acronym commonly used is “PEO”).  The article says that there are over 800 PEOs operating in the U.S.

If you’ve considered outsourcing payroll and employment compliance, you may already have encountered the acronym “PEO,” and chances are that the message you received wasn’t positive.  You may have heard that a PEO “wants to get its hooks” into your business by taking over your payroll and compliance.  Some found it difficult to untangle from the PEO when they weren’t satisfied.  You may also have heard that a PEO will get in the way of your hiring and firing decisions.  Like most outsourcing situations, finding the right provider is probably the most important factor that will affect whether it’s a good solution for you.

The typical PEO serves as the “co-employer” alongside your company.  This means that the PEO acts as the employer of record to process your company’s payroll, cut your employees’ checks, withhold taxes and report them, pay insurance premiums, handle garnishments, and do other administrative tasks.  You and your staff may not like doing these things and you may not be very good at doing them.  By using a PEO to handle these tasks, your company takes advantage of the efficiencies of scale the PEO develops by handling these tasks for your employees along with the hundreds or thousands of employees of the PEO’s other clients.

I asked my friend Knight Hinman of the human resources outsourcing company BBSI what a business owner might look for when considering outsourcing the human resources function.  Knight suggests that an outsourcing solution should, at a minimum, give a business owner time. The solution should let you get out of the boiler room to spend more time at the helm of the ship.  A human resource outsourcing solution should take the compliance headaches off your desk and assure you that your business is meeting its obligations to its employees and the government.

In addition to payroll and reporting services, some providers also help you create safety programs, offer human resources advice and direction, ensure legal compliance, and even write and update employee handbooks.  The right provider may even help you offer your employees better benefits and choices than you might be able to find by yourself.  You’ll probably get better workers’ compensation coverage, lower premiums, and better human resources protection too.

According to Knight, there are other, not-so-obvious ways that an outsourcing solution creates time for the business owner.  For example, a typical workers’ compensation policy requires a periodic payroll audit.  If the outsourcing solution offers a “pay-as-you go” workers’ compensation program, you’ll pay the premium – based on a percentage of payroll – at the same time you pay your employees.  You’ll never suffer through another audit or see another bill for a supplemental premium.  Chances are that your premiums will also be below those offered by a traditional insurance carrier.

Even better, if the outsourcer is self-insured then it’s not subject to rules of the National Council on Compensation Insurance.  This means it can assign occupational descriptions to your employees in ways that make sense.  For example, if you employ a project manager whose job involves occasionally climbing a ladder or stepping on a roof, she won’t be assigned to the same category as a full-time roof installer.  And if the project manager does, unfortunately, suffer an injury and the outsourcer is self-insured, the resulting claim won’t mean that you’ll pay a deductible or that your premium will go up.

So… no more forms and paperwork, no more cutting checks, fewer audits, and lower cost?!  Great!  What else can you ask for?  Many PEOs stop there, but the author of the Business News Daily report I referred to above recommends searching for a provider that also offers a team of subject matter experts to handle your human resources, payroll, benefits, and risk questions.  Knight also suggests looking for a comprehensive human resources solution that includes consultations with subject matter experts who can give you one-on-one support when you need it.

Knight refers to this kind of service provider as a human resources outsourcer (and with the more user-friendly acronym “HRO.”)  An HRO offers help, for example, with the interview process or, as will undoubtedly happen, what to do when you need to let someone go.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could pick up the phone and ask an expert for help with handling these situations?

An HRO can also advocate for you if the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or the IRS has questions about your employment practices or wants to perform the dreaded audit.  An HRO can offer employment practices, insurance coverage and consultation about best practices to help keep you out of trouble.  Ultimately, the HRO’s goal should be to keep you out of these kinds of disputes in the first place.  But if you find yourself embroiled in one of these fights, the HRO should be there to help you get through it.

An HRO solution at this level might also provide supervisor and organizational development, coaching and mentoring, and help with implementing processes and systems for your employees.  An HRO that advocates for you and partners with you to help you run a better business and protect you from the pitfalls of being an employer provides great value, by helping you see the storms and chart a course to deep, smooth water – sort of like human resources “GPS.”

Lastly, and perhaps the most important point Knight shared with me, the HRO should maintain its own staffing levels to ensure that you continue to get timely, personal service as the HRO adds more clients.  Few companies can promise that your service team won’t change over time, but you should look for a provider’s commitment to client service that won’t deteriorate.

The right HRO can help reduce the risks you face running your business, increase employee productivity, and improve your company’s culture.  Like your other trusted advisors, it provides business guidance to help you identify and achieve your long-term goals.

If you’d like to meet Knight, or if you’d like some more ideas about how an HRO might help you, please feel free to call me at 303-831-1411.

I recently had to dig into my law firm’s technology center—and it was a messy undertaking! If your company is like most, your tech “hub” is contained within dust-covered boxes with flashing lights, tucked away under an unused desk or on some slightly out-of-level shelves.  You may not even notice that the lights on some of those boxes no longer flash, unless the stuff inside was supposed to make the other dust-covered boxes work.

To be competitive in today’s economy, most companies need technology at every level.  But how, without dedicating countless hours and an equal number of doses of (insert your pain-reliever of choice here), does today’s business leader keep up with the technology that’s right for your business or even have confidence that you and your team are applying technology well?

There are countless websites and consultants offering help with finding the right software, equipment, or application, and promising to make your life a dream.  I asked my friend Greg Sparks, owner of CIO Source, to share with me some ideas about how a business leader can sort through all the clutter.  Not surprisingly, Greg didn’t immediately recommend calling Geek Squad!  But he didn’t rule it out, either.

Greg spent the first part of his career evaluating, selecting, and applying technology at a Fortune 500 company.  Near the end of his tenure there, he and a friend performed a technology consulting project for a mid-market company.  Greg enjoyed dealing directly with the decision-makers of the business and was hooked.  He decided then and there to focus on providing technology assessment and evaluation services to mid-market businesses, and he formed CIO Source about a year later.

Greg recommends finding a vendor or consultant who can help you figure out what’s appropriate for your business.  Most companies don’t need latest and greatest equipment with the most bells and whistles, or the newest software or application on the market.  Greg’s secret, which he’s graciously allowed me to share with you, is to find a balance between an allocation of your resources and an efficient use of the technology.  The technology should be optimized for the business you’re running today, but scalable for the business you’re going to be running within the next year or two.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all your technology worked together?  At one time, this was a dream only the biggest companies dared hope for.  But enterprise technology isn’t just for the big kids anymore!  Many of Greg’s clients have been surprised, and have experienced good results, from the application of enterprise technology that’s now available to small and mid-market companies.  Even better, no first-born has been pledged in payment of the licensing and consulting fees to make this happen!

Smaller businesses might be surprised to find that there are enterprise solutions that benefit small firms and industry-specific solutions that might fit their needs.  Greg cautioned, however, that specialized offerings carry the risk, if the provider has too few clients, that there won’t be as many updates or innovations as you might like.

In his engagements, Greg usually starts with an assessment of the client’s business model and the processes and functions that would benefit from technology.  He evaluates the existing technology, whether it is QuickBooks or SalesForce, and usually finds a mess.  Not surprisingly, strategic and tactical planning at most companies doesn’t include technology acquisition, so each department makes its own purchasing decisions without regard to the resources or needs of other departments.  This approach was suitable in the past, but in today’s technology-driven and connected marketplace, this approach may leave you in a digitally-stored dustbin of history.

Most software available today doesn’t reside on your dust-covered plastic box, even if the lights still flash.  The trend has been moving to cloud-based technology solutions for several years, which might mean that you’ll need fewer dust-covered, disco-light enhanced boxes.  But that doesn’t mean that you won’t face the same technology optimization and integration problem.  Cloud-based applications will still need to be optimized for your needs and integrated with the rest of your technology solutions.

Greg and his team look at all your technology applications across all departments and make recommendations about what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to acquire.  They analyze places where there are gaps in your technology – and places where you have too much technology.  They offer recommendations about how you can integrate what’s already in place and what you should consider adding.

The evaluation and recommendation process for a mid-market firm with 100 or so employees typically takes Greg’s team 4 to 8 weeks to complete.  Greg’s firm is very good at assessment, analysis, and selection – and if the implementation might need a specialist, Greg’s good at finding them.  In some engagements, Greg has found that he could have probably saved his client millions if Greg could have spent only an hour discussing a technology decision with them a year earlier.

Greg emphasizes that technology is the strategic differentiator for most businesses and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  If your business is like most of Greg’s clients, leveraging technology to create value will be critical to setting you apart in the marketplace.  Since your business will be heavily impacted by technology, you should want your technology person to be business-savvy.  The technology person should be asking, “If it’s not business-driven, then why do it?”

A Chief Information Officer (“CIO”) takes a strategic view of how a business can use technology as a differentiator.  Most small and mid-level businesses rely on department heads and their support staff to fill the technology officer role, or they’re not thinking strategically about technology at all.

Feeling too small or intimidated to get CIO-kind of help?  Greg’s firm also offers “fractional CIO” services to help business leaders who might benefit from his services but don’t have the need or the budget to dedicate a full-time resource to technology.

The best news of all?  Although Greg is fluent in “Geek speak,” he will communicate his recommendations to you in plain English.  And that speaks volumes, regardless of language, about his value to business owners.