May 30, 2008

PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: A Budget Should Tie to Organizational Objectives

Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

Good budgeting is paramount organizational success. Jack Welch suggests the real world situations can be addressed if organizations are willing to tackle two key questions during the budget process: “How can we beat last year’s performance?” and “What is our competition doing and how can we beat them?”

Most companies have some type of strategic or tactical plan that tries to answer those questions. But the real difference is how many also link their budget to the answers to those same two questions? If you plan only addresses costs and revenues, you are probably going to come up short on the outcome at the end of your year. Your plan was not a good one. You need something else.

Budgeting needs to be linked to your strategies and organizational goals. Otherwise your competition will be getting the jump on you.

 print this article Posted In PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook® Comments
May 29, 2008

Welcome to the FastTech 50 Phillips & Reiter!

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the newest sponsor of the FastTech 50, Phillips & Reiter. They will be an excellent addition to the FastTech 50 family!

The 2008 nomination forms will be available soon, so watch this space. I’ll let you know when they are posted.

Mark your calendars, this year’s award ceremony will be held on November 7th at the InterContinental Hotel in the Galleria area. 

Contact John Stephenson at jstephenson@pkftexas.com or Lee Ann Semmel at lasemmel@bizjournals.com with questions or for more information. 

print this article Posted In Tecknowledgy , In Our Community Comments
May 27, 2008

Aggie 100 Nominations Due Friday

I hope you have a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend.

I want to let all of the Aggies and friends of Aggies know that the nomination period for the 2008 Aggie 100 closes on Friday. To submit nominations, visit www.aggie100.com and click on “Nominate.”

To be considered for the Aggie 100 program companies (corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships) must meet the following criteria:

  • Company Size and Longevity – The Company must meet both of the following criteria:
    • Have been in business for 5 years or more as of June 30, 2008, and
    • Have had verifiable revenues of $100,000 or more for calendar year 2005.
  • Aggie Leadership – The Company must meet one or more of the following three criteria:
    • A Texas A&M University former student or group of former students must have owned 50% or more of the company from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2007, or
    • A Texas A&M University former student must have served as the Company’s chief executive (for example chairman, CEO, president or managing partner) from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2007, or
    • A Texas A&M University former student must have founded the company and been active as a member of the most senior management team from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2007.
  • Company Character – The Company must operate in a manner consistent with the Aggie Code of Honor and in keeping with the values and image of Texas A&M University.

As the accountants for and the sponsors of the Aggie 100, PKF Texas is proud to play a part in the celebration of Aggie entrepreneurship. If you have any questions contact Lenae Huebner at 979-845-4882 or E-mail: lhuebner@mays.tamu.edu.

print this article Posted In In Our Community Comments
May 23, 2008

PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: The Real Challenge of CRM

Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

The real challenge of successful CRM processes is not the software, but rather the people who are going to be a part of the process. Too many managers assume the software will solve all their problems and help them become the next great success story in Fortune or the Houston Business Journal. 

Sadly, the most important aspect of your company, the knowledge and experience of your key employees and their managers is sometimes left to chance during the implementation of a CRM project. Leaving such a critical component to chance, means you will have no chance at success.    The hard lessons learned through experience, your industry cycles, your customers buying needs can’t always be factored into the CRM application you ultimately select. The CRM software is but one tool experienced managers can draw upon to be successful.

One of my favorite management books is “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni.   It’s required reading for all our PKF consulting personnel. One of the key points is “…It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it’s so powerful and so rare…” Part of the formula for success in the CRM arena is getting everyone on the same page and rowing in the right direction. print this article Posted In PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook® Comments
May 21, 2008

Thomas B. Pickens III is Speaking at the HTC

Next Tuesday, May 27th, I am going to the TECH luncheon at the Houston Technology Center (HTC) where Thomas B. Pickens III, CEO and Chairman of the Board of SPACEHAB, will be the keynote speaker. 

SPACEHAB is a pretty cool company, headquartered in Webster, TX, they preview commercial space services.   I’m eager to hear what Pickens has to say. He is a serial entrepreneur and has contributed much to the emerging technology community in Houston. 

TECH (Technology Executive Club of Houston) is the CEO Roundtable luncheon group that meets monthly at the HTC. Limited to 100 individuals, this group provides its members with outstanding programs each month like this one with Mr. Pickens.

If you are a CEO of a technology company in Houston, and would like to join me, I have a couple of extra tickets. Shoot me an email to gregshead@pkftexas.com, and let me know you are interested in attending this meeting or a future one. 

print this article Posted In Tecknowledgy , In Our Community Comments
May 19, 2008

Houston Leading the Way

Last week I attended several of the Houston Business Journal’s Celebrate!Enterprise events.

The Houston Growth Summit, featuring Joel Kotkin, author of The City, and a panel with Mike Inselmann, President of American MetroStudy Corp and Barton Smith, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston, was especially informative.

The short synopsis is that Houston is a great place to work and live. This of course is not a surprise to those of us who do live and work here!

Kotkin touched on many interesting points during his presentation. 

Houston has seen a 20.1% growth in professional and business service employment between 2000 and 2007. Compare that to -5.7% in Boston and -1.1% in New York City. The global business community recognizes that Houston is a great place to do business.

Our growth in total employment from 2000-2007 is 13.4%, the second highest in the nation, after Phoenix. With organizations like the Greater Houston Partnership and the Houston Technology Center, companies have the resources to be successful here. 

Another interesting point to note is the ratio of home price growth versus annual average pay growth. Between 2005 and 2005, Houston’s was 1.38. Compared to LA’s 8.27, our housing prices really can’t be beat.

It’s encouraging to hear these figures. We’re not seeing the same type of economic climate that other major U.S. cities are facing right now. Through Opportunity Houston, we’re seeing an investment in Houston as a player in the global marketplace. Right now, Houston’s a good place to be, and I can’t wait to find out where we’re headed.

print this article Posted In In Our Community , Observations Comments
May 16, 2008

PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: Why is There No New Business?

Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

As we roll into the second quarter of calendar 2008, I thought I might take a moment to focus on some interesting research about sales, and new customer opportunities. Here is some recent research on the topic.

  • More than 70% of sales leads are never followed up, while 43% of those not contacted purchase what they inquired about within 13 months. Source: Cahners Publishing
  • Companies that retain 5% more of their customers can boost corporate profits a minimum of 25%. Source: Bain & Co.
  • Over 80% of generated leads are never followed up or are dropped or mishandled. Source: Abderdeen Group
  • An 11% reduction in dropped/lost leads, combined with a 1% improvement in lead to order conversion rate, can increase gross profit by 136%. Source: BtoB Magazine

It’s pretty clear from this research data that successful companies that are finding new business have established a process for the recording, distribution and follow up of sales activities within their organization. Most people call this Customer Relationship Management or CRM and the related activities. The activities and the attitudes your employees take in these processes is critical to having a successful CRM program.

How successful are you?

 print this article Posted In PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook® Comments
May 15, 2008

Houston Attracting Tech Companies

I was recently asked, how can Houston continue to attract top tech companies and talent to the city. Interesting question. I see two things that have to happen.

First, we need to continue the branding and awareness of the Houston tech community to those outside of the Houston and Texas regions.  I know it sounds old fashioned, but folks outside of the Texas region still consider Houston a two dimensional city.  Energy and Space Exploration.  While both of those are very important to Houston, the growth in the high tech, health care research and delivery, educational research, telecommunications and manufacturing will continue to outpace our baseline industries. 

We see it every day, but those not as familiar to our community do not.  That’s one of the reasons why PKF Texas created the Fast Tech 50 Awards program and brought that to the Houston Business Journal.  We wanted to start the ball rolling on branding and awareness of the city as a source of great success in the tech sector.  We are fully committed to making this sector a success for our city.  One of the areas that the Houston Technology Center, HBJ, and our firm supports is the Rice Business Plan Competition.  Its success and the information the participants receive during the competition has reached around the world.  We had several plans from outside the U.S. this year.  The Rice event has turned out to be so successful that Fortune Small Business decided to drop their own competition and endorse the Rice event.  Also, working with the Greater Houston Partnership, Walter Ulrich, our President of the HTC was able to get Houston’s visibility changed with some national rankings recently with a national publication as well. 

Second, we have to create jobs and fight for talented tech personnel to relocate to our city.  This is no longer a fight for economic survival on a local, or regional basis.  I recently had the opportunity to review some economic strategic planning from another region and they indicated they were fighting for business from communities their size in the domestic U.S.  They couldn’t be further from the truth to be successful.  In my opinion, we are fighting to secure talent to our community locally, from the global community.  I can assure you Houston through organizations like the Greater Houston Partnership, and the HTC see things on a global basis and we want to compete globally for all kinds of business opportunities.  Given our baseline business in Energy, this gives us a leg up on the acceptance of Houston as a global city and not just a city in Texas.  Our cost of living and the baseline for salaries for tech personnel are very favorable to both companies and individuals alike.  And our existing talent pool is just outstanding, some of the success stories we have in the tech sector would rival any region in the US and beyond. 

How would you respond to that question? Are we doing enough to attract the tech community to Houston? print this article Posted In Tecknowledgy , Week in Geek , In Our Community , Observations Comments
May 12, 2008

Trends in Accounting

I see several trends evolving within the accounting profession.  First is the final stages of paperless automation within the back office and field work.  This started several years ago, but the vendors have finally caught up to the demands of the profession.  That includes paperless filing, document management and practice workflow solutions within the office, paperless audits and tax returns, and paperless activities within the back office. 

Second is the increasing demand of mobile computing.  Now mobile computing goes to the virtual office, but it’s much, much more than that.  It’s the finalization of reaching this version of the “wired” or “fully connected” professional within firms.  Our clients increasingly expect us to be available at a moment’s notice to meet their needs.  Only through Windows Mobile solutions are we going to be fully connected.

Third is good IT governance and practices especially with regard to security management, confidentiality of client data, business continuity and disaster recovery.

And lastly, business intelligencewith the applications and technologies used for gathering, providing access and visibility to, and analyzing data to help business owners and manager make informed business decisions.  Our Dynamics NAV practice is getting additional requests for solutions in this area.

print this article Posted In Microsoft Dynamics NAV , Tecknowledgy , Observations Comments
May 9, 2008

PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: Prevent Fraud in Your Organization

Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

There have been several high profile cases of fraud in the news in recent years. How do you take the steps to reduce the opportunity for fraud in your organization?

The most common methods of discovering fraud were tips and by accident, followed closely by internal audits, investigations, and internal controls. Tips from employees, vendors, and customers made up over one-third of the discoveries.

The most effective method of reducing fraud in your organization is by creating a culture of integrity and high ethics among employees at all levels. This is initiated by the senior executives/owners setting the tone at the top. Create the expectation that fraud will not be tolerated. Develop a code of ethics and conduct that employees are required to sign and adhere to.

Review your antifraud processes and internal controls and develop a strong oversight process. These two activities go hand-in-hand in sending a strong message to potential perpetrators that you are doing everything you can to reduce the opportunity for them to commit fraud upon your company.

 print this article Posted In PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook® Comments
May 8, 2008

Accountingweb Article on Presentations

As you know, I make several presentations a year to many different audiences. I just read a great article on Accountingweb from Jack Downton, an entrepreneur in the U.K. about making a good presentation.

I wanted to share the article with you because no matter how many you do there’s always room to tweak your style. We all have to make presentations, whether it is to a room of 200 or 2. It’s always good to see what others are doing, to stay relevant and fresh.

Highlights take into account include:

  • PowerPoint – how it dramatically reduces your impact
  • What does your audience need to hear?
  • It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it
I’m definitely going to be using some of the tips in my next presentation. What have you found to be successful when making presentations? Do you incorporate music or video? Have you found a tried and true way to engage the audience? print this article Posted In Observations Comments
May 5, 2008

Microsoft/Yahoo...No Merger, What Next?

Over the weekend Microsoft dropped its bid to take over Yahoo!. This is an interesting development in what initially appeared to be an inevitable take-over.

This brings up a few questions:

  • Who can compete with Google?
  • What does this mean for Microsoft in terms of the next step to compete in Web 2.0?
  • Where does Yahoo! go from here? They’ve been playing second fiddle to Google for quite some time.

CNN/Fortune has an interesting article that speculates about the above questions.

What are your thoughts? What do you see as the next steps for these companies? What can companies do to make a dent in Google’s seeming invincibility? print this article Posted In Tecknowledgy , Week in Geek Comments
May 2, 2008

A Conversation with Michael Dell

It’s not often you get a chance to hear one of the country’s foremost experts in information technology. Earlier this week we (myself and several colleagues at PKF Texas) were treated to one of the best, “A Conversation with Michael Dell”, founder, Chairman and CEO of Dell – and a native son of Houston.

On April 30th, Dell was the guest speaker on a panel for the Houston Forum. Also on the panel, Walter Ulrich, CEO of the Houston Technology Center, Leonard Rejcek, President and CEO of Manhattan Construction Co., moderated the session.

Dell took questions from Walter, Leonard, and the audience. 

Some of the most interesting points I took from the presentation include:

  • 1 billion people are currently on the internet
  • 500,000 new users log on every day
  • Use of the internet is expected to double in the next five years creating opportunities for
    • Mobile
    • Online
    • Bandwidth

He also commented on his company, Dell, giving valuable insight into one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs:

           

  • 10 years ago Dell’s revenues were $6 billion and they are currently at $61 billion
  • In the past year (before he took over again as CEO) they experienced an annual growth rate of -11% and this year they are currently at a +21% growth rate
  • Dell stresses keeping things simple for his people and customers alike
  • He encourages conversation with your customers
  • Dell (the company) recently launched www.dell.com/earth to address the company’s green initiatives
  • Dell’s key target markets are outside the U.S. He refers to them as BRIC +10. BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. The +10 is several other countries where the technology sector is booming or has the potential to grow exponentially in the next few years.

A few other thoughts I noted about the technology growth:

  • China currently has several of the worlds most visited websites
  • Due to the fact that the internet does not have borders, social networks, collaboration are pushing content all over the world.

Great stuff, and I was glad I was able to hear him speak. If you get the chance to see one of his presentations, I would highly recommend it.

print this article Posted In Tecknowledgy , In Our Community Comments
May 2, 2008

PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: Preparing Budgets - Why?

Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

Ask any four people in an organization about their budgeting process and you are likely to get four different answers. Some of those answers would include: “We did it last year,” “its part of the manager’s bonus calculation,” “We are trying to control expenses,” “It shows us our cash flow.” Truly successful organizations know that budgeting is one of the significant foundations for developing a high performing organization.

See if this sounds like your company:  Round 1 of the budget process starts with departmental levels submitting their guesses for obtaining next year’s financial results. Senior management usually knows what they want these numbers to be, but they don’t share it with the first line department heads.   The first round is usually returned with changes. Now armed with better financial information the departmental manager can guess at the numbers their superiors want and budget for it. Then the departmental budgets are consolidated and submitted further up the line for a second round of guessing.   

The problem with this process is that we now have a numbers guessing game going on, instead of a business plan. And we have given the departmental managers a way out of their estimates since the estimates weren’t theirs anyway.

Budgeting should be part of a performance management process. Budgets need to be linked to corporate strategies. How well is your budget and corporate strategy linked?

 print this article Posted In PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook® Comments