Key insights
- Evaluate personal priorities alongside your business’s trajectory to align growth efforts with your ultimate objectives. Consider funding sources and your readiness for investment.
- Leverage key performance indicators and analytics beyond financial statements, such as customer and employee feedback, to gain insights and improve business health.
- Identify and mitigate risks, especially during major changes like leadership succession or new product launches, to protect business value and stability.
Adapt to any situation with clear goals and a solid business plan.
Whether you’re pursuing a new opportunity or responding to a crisis, financial resilience provides a healthy foundation for thriving amid uncertainty. With a solid vision and goals, a clear view of your organization’s value, and a plan to address risk — your business can be ready for just about anything.
Any time is a good time to level-set organizational expectations. Review several key points as you assess your business’s financial health and prepare for the future.
How to shape the financial future of your business
Be ready to set clear and genuine goals
Periodically, take a step back and evaluate your business’s trajectory — can your business continue to grow and drive profitability? Will the business be able to help you reach your goals?
After all, the ultimate goal of a business is to generate a return on investment for its owners. To start, look at your organizational and personal financial plans through the same lens, since the two are often intertwined.
If there’s an opportunity to grow and scale the business, first determine where the investment will come from and your personal readiness as a business owner to see it through. Retained earnings, capital contributions from owners, equity offerings, and loans can all be viable sources of investment, each with their time and place as personal and industry-wide circumstances allow.
As you consider the future, be honest with yourself about your priorities as an owner and how that connects to decisions made within your business and in your personal life. Understand your personal end goal to help clarify your assessment of personal and organizational financial health and determine next steps for you and your business.
Assess the value of your business
Business is about results. Assess your organizational value to understand how you’re doing and what the future could hold.
Always prepare your business as if it were for sale and make time for business transition planning. If you build a healthy business with enough flexibility, you’ll always have options.
Consider your business’s value triangle
Ask yourself specific questions as you consider each of three factors driving financial results:
Execution
- How does your business make money?
- Is it operating efficiently?
- What processes and systems can be improved?
- What is the cost structure you need now and in the future to reach your goals?
- Are you making the most of opportunities?
- How are you managing risk?
Growth
- Is there demand for your product or service?
- Can you develop and maintain customer relationships to capitalize on that demand?
- Can you grow sustainably and diversify risk within your customer base?
Leadership
- Do you have the right vision and the right team to put it into practice?
- What skills does the team need?
- Does the organizational culture support your goals and values?
- Is there a leadership succession plan?
Review data and metrics as you answer these questions. Each of these segments deserves its own set of key performance indicators. Hard numbers often reveal insights we can’t otherwise glean from simple observation.
Understand value is more than just financial results
There is also intangible value in a business (such as strength of systems and processes, organizational culture, leadership bench strength, and customer mix), and focusing on these factors allows you to strengthen the value of your business.
The good news is much of it can be measured. A financial statement tells a story, but so do customer surveys, employee satisfaction assessments, recruiting trends, and efficiency scores. Monitor these data points to help determine trends that affect your business’s bottom line and make necessary adjustments.
If you lack visibility, conduct a comprehensive review of the entire triangle and quantify unknowns using custom dashboards and data analytics. An in-depth look at your people, processes, and technology often yields surprising takeaways and action items to help you understand the current state of your business.
Owning a business is a personal journey. Explore our owner legacy webinar series on topics like succession planning, transition options, and enhancing value — and start building the future you imagine.
Consider business risks and be prepared
Every business owner operates with some degree of risk. While identifying and monitoring risks for the business owner and organization do not always improve financial results, it should be one of the first focus areas as you assess your business’s health.
Often, a business is most vulnerable when in transition, whether it’s landing a large client, gearing up for a new product line, or transitioning to the next generation of leaders. In these instances, it’s critical to have a strong leadership team and a well-thought-out plan in place to navigate these changes.
Mitigate unnecessary risk to help protect yourself, your family, and your business, along with any value generated in the future. Start with areas that need to be addressed sooner rather than later, such as estate and ownership matters, legal, regulatory, insurance, tax, and cybersecurity considerations.
How CLA can help you plan for business transitions
Through an organizational assessment, you can work with CLA professionals to connect the dots, identify needs, review leadership and talent gaps, design financial models, and make plans for succession. Together, this process culminates with actionable steps for maintaining financial health.
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Adapt to any situation with clear goals and a solid business plan. Complete the form below to connect with CLA.