Going For Gold In Your Small Business

Going for Gold in Your Small Business

by

Aisha Jones Scheffel

Measuring yourself and/or your business is always difficult. Whether it is weighing yourself after a week on Weight Watchers or waiting for your credit score to pull up after you have applied for a loan. However, without measurement how else could you show growth and improvement. Let’s take for example the famous swimmer Michael Phelps. Do you think in practice he swims and goes “I think I made pretty good time with the breaststroke”. Or do you think he is timed to within 1/100th of a second during practice and tries to continually beat his time. Likewise, we will explore a way to analyze the integrated financial strategy for your small business, so that is fine-tuned and you can exceed your competitors even if it is by a slight margin.

What is an integrated financial strategy? Well, it is similar to an integrated marketing strategy, which makes sure all the elements in your marketing strategy are aligned and working together with your overall business strategy. Likewise, an integrated financial management strategy makes sure all the financial elements of your business are in place, working together, and are cohesive with the overall company strategy. Many small business owners at least have a bookkeeper or an accountant. If not, GET ONE NOW. This is the equivalent of trying to be an Olympic swimmer and not even having a pool. However, managing your small business finances goes beyond having a fabulous bookkeeper.

An integrated financial strategy is like the all around gold medal for women’s gymnastics. You can’t just be good on the balance beam, you need to be awesome at floor, vault, and uneven bars.. And more often than not, it is more like the all around team event. You need different people on your team each excelling at their best events.

There are 5 areas of an integrated financial strategy: Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Credit, Finance, Accounting, and Treasury.

Accounts Receivables concerns how you bill and receive payments from customers.

Account Payable concerns your payment of vendors.

Accounting concerns the compilation of financial statements and making sure Uncle Sam get his share.

Credit concerns the evaluation and monitoring of extending credit to customers.

Finance deals with budgets and financial performance metrics.

Treasury concerns your banking relationship.

In honor of the Olympics, I have created a template where you can rank your business in each of these areas. You can assign either gold, silver, or bronze to each of the categories mentioned above. If you want to take this strategy up a level or “Kick it up” as Emeril says, fill out the template for your competitors to see where you stand in comparison to them. You will want to concentrate on the areas where you rank a bronze or silver, so you know what needs to be tweaked to create a more holistic approach to the finances of your business. Who knows after this evaluation, you could be the new gold standard.

Copyright (c) 2008 Aisha Jones Scheffel

Aisha Jones-Scheffel is “The Doctor CFO”. Get her FREE SPECIAL REPORT, “7 Never Before Told Ways to Make Your Practice Stop Bleeding Money (That Has Nothing to do with Insurance or Billing)” and her FREE money management how-to tips at

DoctorCFO.com

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