By Bill English, Partner, Platinum Group Business owners live with their businesses, 24 x 7 x 365. Their business is always in their thoughts – even if only in the back of their minds. At the end of a tough day, when they go home, they’ll often not want to re-live their day. Isn’t that time to re-focus and relax? But giving their spouse the […]
By Faith Barnard, Executive Consultant Collection efforts are even more difficult than before COVID-19 struck. But with an adjusted approach and a little outside-the-box thinking, your success can earn customer loyalty and make a measurable impact on your own business. Here are five ideas to consider to increase your company’s cash flow: Keep in touch. Calling is always best. Your customers know your phone number […]
By Randy Kroll, Partner Leadership is critical during this COVID-19 inflection point. Decisions must be made quickly. Communications must happen in rapid pace. Information must be filtered hourly. Here are three critical actions that Platinum Group suggests to help guide business and organizational leaders in these times: Be Strategic — We know from past experiences that inflection points in life and business create stress, but […]
By Greg Backlund, Executive Consultant, Operations Improvement An interesting way to consider business issues is to compare the economy to living ecosystems. Millions of years of survival testing provides a lot of success and failure examples! The current Covid disruption is likely to be a major ’extinction event’ for many businesses – unfortunately, probably, many businesses will go bankrupt or have to drastically restructure. In […]
A key cash flow impact item for manufacturers under stress is inventory control. Supply chains may be significantly stressed or disrupted, and production volume level forecasts will need scenario assessments in the COVID-19 environment to drive effective inventory planning and management. The impact of inventory management on cash flow is crucial, but it is often difficult to maintain the macro and micro levels of visibility […]
“My business is losing money right now. What steps can I take to save my business?” According to Platinum Partner Pat Brennan, many business owners are facing uncertain market conditions. Their customer buying patterns have been disrupted by the uncertainty facing all of us today. Unprofitable operations, a decline in the collateral value of assets used to support bank loans and erosion of working capital […]
What does a son, daughter, cousin or in-law think about the business owned by a family member? As Platinum Group’s Steve Coleman writes, “Whether or not they are involved daily in that business, a family business does affect the entire family. Yet many business owners of privately held companies do not usually consider the thoughts of other family members — until it’s too late. That’s […]
When a family business negatively impacts a courtship, strongly consider how it could destroy a marriage relationship by reading a recent blog post by Platinum’s Bill English, “I Can’t Marry Into This.” Bill says, “This story is a compilation of three different calls I received last year that were remarkably similar. All three found me via this web site and called me for advice: two […]
Everyone talks about culture. Everyone believes that a good culture is necessary to success in business. Yet, our understanding of what it takes to build a great culture is amazingly immature because, in part, we don’t know how to define what culture is. Consider these definitions that a quick Google search will give you:
“In other words culture can be defined as an evolving set of collective beliefs, values and attitudes. Culture is a key component in business and has an impact on the strategic direction of business.
“How is my company performing and what, if anything, should I be doing to keep on track?”
That’s a common question owners should ask themselves daily. Just like going on a trip, they know their desired destination — sustainable profitability and working capital sufficiency. Yet without a series of early warning indicators, they begin to lose altitude and can be headed for a crash before they have a chance to make a course correction and save themselves.