This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Kathy Stershic of Dialog Communications continues her Brand Reputation in the Era of Data series by sharing principle six: comply with all applicable laws and regulations - then exceed them.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC Small Business and Entrepreneur Committee Chair Norm Snyder and his colleague Andrew Newton, both of Aronson LLC, share highlights from the committee’s November event, Positioning Your Company for Acquisition, showing how a good company is bought, not sold.
On October 21, 2015, NVTC sponsored a panel of experts to discuss the topic “Positioning your Business for Acquisition”. The panel included Larry Davis, a partner in Aronson Capital Partners; Dana Duffy, the CFO of Invincea; Michael Pratt, serial entrepreneur and managing partner & co-founder of Select Venture Partners LLC; and Mark Spoto, managing director at Razor’s Edge Ventures. The event was moderated by Committee Chair Norm Snyder, lead partner in Aronson’s Technology Industry Services.
The panelists spoke to a number of questions from the moderator and members of the audience. Topics covered included timing of selling a business, including initial planning; how to minimize due diligence headaches; how to find potential buyers and the need to find more than one possible suitor; and the characteristics of potential acquisitions that potential buyers typically consider.
A significant discussion involved how long in advance a company should start planning for acquisition, with a general consensus that it varies. The panelists gave examples ranging from acquisition planning beginning six months before closing to as far out as nine years. All of the panelists emphasized that an entrepreneur should always be preparing for an acquisition in an orderly way and should reevaluate possible exit strategies at each inflexion point during the life of the business. This built into another theme common throughout discussions: sell your business while it is on its way up, not on the way down. By constantly evaluating exit strategies, especially exit timeline, an entrepreneur can weigh the benefits and costs to each exit strategy at different times during the life of the business so as to not miss a good opportunity, which may be affected by external factors such as the state of the economy, as well as internal factors such as company performance
Another big topic was how companies can minimize the headaches of due diligence work. Again there were multiple answers to this question. The panelists focused on the benefits of having quality, competent advisors throughout the life of the business. One panelist, who had been a key management member in selling several companies, stressed the importance of making important investments in administration during the life of the business as the costs of not doing so may be far greater near the time of sale if significant regulatory, compliance, tax or accounting issues emerge during the due diligence. Panelists noted that some key areas where companies can get themselves in trouble are trying to draft legal documents without an attorney, not saving electronic copes of all signed legal documents, not paying payroll taxes when due, not complying with federal, state and international tax rules (including sales taxes), not having necessary IP legal protection and by not ensuring proper accounting treatment of transactions from day one, especially for complex areas such as revenue recognition. Problems (and surprises) that arise during due diligence can reduce prices, delay closings or even kill deals.
As for valuation, the panelists stressed the importance of being able to demonstrate continuing revenue streams. One time sales are great but all of the panelists spoke to how a company that can demonstrate year over year revenue streams will be more attractive to potential buyers. The other piece to valuation was context, and in particular, the fact that entrepreneurs to ask what their company can bring to a potential buyer. In many cases a smaller company being acquired is merely a rounding error on the acquirer’s financial statements, and the attraction is the potential of the acquiree’s products or technology, including synergies with the acquirer’s existing lines of business. A key concern of the acquirer is damage to its reputation, e.g. in the event of non-compliance with regulations or a law suit. The panel emphasized the need for depth, rather than breadth in the value the potential acquiree can add to the buyer’s business. The overall conclusion was that those entrepreneurs who best determine how their companies can add value to a potential buyer, are most likely to sell, and sell at a good price.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Kathy Stershic of Dialog Communications continues her Brand Reputation in the Era of Data series by sharing principle five: developing an empathic organizational culture that understands, internalizes and practices customer-sensitive behaviors.
Several respondents in our qualitative feedback study emphasized that organizations’ observing privacy policies internally was very important to them. While most every organization has an external privacy notice (understandable or not), many companies lack a robust internal privacy policy, data management policies, or even clarity of their privacy mission and position. It is important to thoughtfully define these, then train your people, in a resonant and memorable way about these corporate values and an employee’s role in them. Reinforce the training with an ongoing internal awareness campaign. Help your team remember that behind every purchase, tweet, post, click and share is a human being and all that entails. Anyone who has something or someone to protect can understand that.
This is a foundational aspect of your organization’s personality and reputation – how do you want to be seen and regarded? Are you the respectful company? The service-oriented company? One who customers see as sneaky or arrogant? One who is so consumed with innovation and speed that they forget there are real people who will be served or potentially harmed by your invention?
Consider incenting or requiring those who work with other’s personally identifiable information, whether it belongs to customers, employees, partners, students or anyone else, to get certifications. This can help them more deeply understand the implications of what they’re working with. A colleague of mine likened this to how massage therapists are trained to respect the bodies of their customers, with their reputation and careers dependent upon following those protocols.
A best practice is to conduct what’s called a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) to evaluate risk in both existing and intended practices and services. There are online resources to offer you guidance (shameless commerce warning: Dialog can help with these); you will need some understanding of the legal and regulatory environment in which you operate. Then, when you objectively understand the level of risk, you can consider adjustments to your practices or plans if necessary. Those who may decline to participate should be made fully accountable for any consequences – financial or otherwise.
Acculturating a sense of responsibility and empathy, with policies to back that up, will go a long way toward solidifying your organization’s reputation as a trusted vendor. And that translates to the bottom line.
Brand Reputation in the Era of Data: 8 Principles for Responsible Data Stewardship That Won’t Kill Your Customer Relationships
Brand Reputation in the Era of Data – Principle 1: Empower Customer Control
Brand Reputation in the Era of Data – Principle 2: Be Clear and Accountable
Brand Reputation in the Era of Data – Principle 3: Do Everything You Can to Protect Customer Data
Brand Reputation in the Era of Data – Principle 4: Mind Your Partners!
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This week on NVTC’s Blog, Business Development, Marketing & Sales Vice Chair Jenny Couch of member company Providge Consulting shares how you can select the consulting firm that will actually help you complete your project successfully.
Picture it: you’re leading a critical project for your company. Success is crucial. And you need to partner with the right consulting firm to make sure the project is a success. So, here you are listening to the fifth consulting company pitch to you today. Each company has promised to literally deliver you the moon if you just place your faith in them. They all have “the best team.” Each company is “innovative” and “world-class” and “client-focused.” Each company gave a visually-engaging presentation while delivering rapid-fire oratory about their “outstanding” experience.
You’re tired. You’re bored of listening to the same presentation. And you’re not sure how to determine which consulting firm is the best out of the group that pitched. But you have to make a decision. You’ve got a project to move forward!
So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff (please don’t ask, I don’t even know what chaff is), the weak from the strong, the… you get the point. How do you select the consulting firm that will actually help you complete your project successfully?
Sadly, no silver bullet currently exists, but there are a few cues to look for during a company’s pitch to help you select the right firm:
- Confirmation they understand your project’s scope. During a sales pitch, make sure the firm clearly summarizes your project’s scope. Repeating it isn’t good enough (come on, we can all memorize a few lines). A firm should clearly demonstrate their understanding of your need and the scope. If they aren’t even clear on what the ask is, how can they deliver a viable solution? Bonus points if the pitching firm carefully articulates potential issues with your current scope. After all, you’re hiring them for their expertise – they should demonstrate their experience straight out of the gate.
- Hard evidence of their greatness. Every firm inserts the following words into their pitch at some point “We’re innovative, world-class, award-winning, best-in-class, outstanding service, client-focused, leader in the marketplace. We have the best team, the greatest tools, the best methodologies, the most cutting-edge solutions.” You get the point. It’s all fine and good to talk about how fabulous you are, but simply stating that you’re the world’s greatest whatever means exactly nothing if you can’t back it up. Look for firms that include evidence of their greatness. How many of their employees are PMP-certified? How many years of experience does the average consultant have? How many consultants have advanced training? What benefits do they offer to recruit the top talent? How long do their engagements last on average with their clients? What actual awards have they won? What tools or methodologies do they use that separate them from the competition?
- Leadership involvement. Go visit any consulting firm’s website right now. I guarantee you’ll find at least a paragraph, if not entire pages, dedicated to displaying just how focused they are on their clients. Frankly, this should really go without saying. A consulting firm’s business is the success of its clients. If you aren’t winning, we aren’t winning. And a firm that consistently falls down on the job is one that shouldn’t be in business long. But, regardless, a firm being client focused has become an ubiquitous statement in the industry. As with talking about how “great” or “innovative” a firm is, it’s not good enough to simply claim they are client-focused. Instead look for proof of their commitment to their clients through leadership involvement. At Providge, a Managing Director is assigned to every single account, and their cell number is turned over to you so you can reach out to them at anytime throughout the project’s lifecycle. That’s how we work to demonstrate our commitment to our clients, and you should look for similar involvement from your consulting partners.
- Mitigating strategies and fall back plans – not just empty promises. Sure, we’d all love to have our projects delivered on-time, and on-budget, with no issues whatsoever, no changes in scope, no significant conflict. But this isn’t going to happen. On any project. Ever. If a consulting firm guarantees they can deliver a project perfectly, without issue, conflict, or scope change, oh, and they’ll do it for just 3/4 of the budget, run in the opposite direction. Quickly. Issues, conflicts, and scope changes are bound to come up on any project. Budgets will change and timelines will shift. It’s completely normal. Don’t look for a company that promises to give you absolutely everything you’ve asked for. Look for a company that thoughtfully demonstrates how they proactively address issues and conflicts, how they limit scope creep, how they broach budget or timeline changes. Ask them for examples of how they’ve managed such changes on previous projects. Were the strategies they employed successful? Press them to demonstrate their expertise. If they don’t come to the table with plans for managing commonly-occurring project roadblocks, then cut ’em loose.
- Real responses to your questions. We’ve all watched politicians respond to questions by giving an entirely unrelated answer. “Thanks for the question, Bob, and let me just talk for a moment about how great this country is, how great the American public is. This country is great, Americans are great, and you’re great. I think that answers your question completely.” Consulting firms have a similar capacity to spin their responses to questions into another demonstration of how amazing they are, and how they’ll deliver everything you’ve asked for at half the price. So, if you ask a question on say, information assurance, make sure they respond to your actual question – perhaps they provide examples of their approach to information assurance on past projects. Perhaps, they discuss some of the best practices in information assurance and what might make sense for your organization to consider. Maybe the refer to the 75 percent of their team members who have advanced information assurance training. But if you ask about their approach to information assurance, and their response is, “Thanks for the question, Bob. Let me just talk for a minute about how great our company is and how innovative we are when it comes to information assurance. We truly are a world-class firm when it comes to issues of information assurance, and we’ll bring all that greatness, and innovativeness, and world-classiness to your project,” it’s time to give this firm the boot.
This post was written by Jenny Couch. Couch is a project management consultant, and Providge’s Business Development Manager. She loves efficiency, to-do lists, and delivering projects on-time and on-budget.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Kathy Stershic of Dialog Communications continues her Brand Reputation in the Era of Data series by sharing principle four: protecting data when it is passed on to others in your value chain.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Kathy Stershic of Dialog Communications continues her Brand Reputation in the Era of Data series by sharing principle three: protect your customer data.
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This week on NVTC’s Blog, Business Development, Marketing & Sales Vice Chair Jenny Couch of member company Providge Consulting shares potential benefits and risk factors of outsourcing your tech department.
Maintaining an in-house IT department is the right decision for many businesses, especially those where IT is a central, or critical aspect of the business.
But for many companies, maintaining an IT department that is fully equipped to tackle any IT need your company may encounter can be costly and inefficient.
Outsourcing certain functions of your IT department may deliver a number of benefits to your company. But, in assessing whether outsourcing is the right decision for your company, you should also consider the potential risks.
Let’s take a look at some of the potential benefits, and consider some risk factors of outsourcing your tech department.
The benefits…
- Accommodate shifting projects and priorities. IT needs fluctuate constantly. It may be difficult to shift full-time employees who were hired for a specific skill set around as your company’s IT needs change. By outsourcing, you can easily accommodate changes as your IT projects and priorities shift.
- Deploy resources where you need them, only for as long as you need them. Going through an operating system upgrade? Implementing a new ERP system? These are projects that will require a temporary increase in resources. Hiring full-time employees to fulfill short-term needs is expensive, and time consuming. Through outsourcing, resources can quickly be scaled up and down to accommodate project needs, or occasional increases in departmental workloads.
- Gain access to talented specialists. Certain IT functions, or software require support from highly-qualified specialists. These specialists often have years of experience, extensive training, and a hefty price tag. Bringing them on full-time is expensive. And that’s if you can even find such specialists in the first place. By relying on an external vendor who will either already have these specialists in-house, or experience recruiting these specialists you can drastically reduce the time and money involved in recruiting and retaining such specialists.
- Free up internal resources. Roles and responsibilities change over time sometimes for the better, sometimes for well, the not-so-better. Your IT team may have picked up responsibilities overtime they were never supposed to support, thereby neglecting their original scope of responsibility. By outsourcing certain functions, especially those functions that can be easily outsourced, your staff can gain back the critical time they need to perform their role effectively.
- Cost savings. Ultimately, when done right, outsourcing your IT needs, can significantly reduce you IT costs. If you’re able to better accommodate shifting projects and priorities, deploy resources where you need them for as long as you need them, gain access to talented specialists when needed, and free up your internal resources, you can reduce costs across the board, and improve the effectiveness of your overall IT department.
And now for the risks…
- Your vendor’s approach and plans may not align with your strategic plan. Are you planning to rely on an ERP system to support your back-office functionality? Is there a desire to move to the cloud now or in the future? What are your plans for scaling and growth? Before you consider outsourcing IT functions you need to have a thorough strategic plan laid out so you can understand where an outside vendor could provide support. If you simply start trying to outsource an IT function without considering your longer term plans, you run the risk of engaging a vendor that is not aligned with your strategic vision.
- Some IT functions can’t be easily outsourced. Some IT functions lend themselves naturally to outsourcing. Project management support, help desk support, etc. But other functions don’t fit so naturally with outsourcing. If you are considering outsourcing, it’s important to fully evaluate the ease with which you might be able to outsource the function, as well as whether you will easily realize benefits by outsourcing that particular function.
- Employee morale may drop. If you plan to cut current staff to accommodate a transition to outsourced tech support, you need to be prepared for decreased morale amongst remaining staff. Lay-offs are never easy, especially if cuts are occurring purely to save costs by outsourcing certain functions.
- You run the risk of “getting stuck”. One of the things we emphasize at Providge is documentation and training. We do this because, consultants, and consulting companies, by nature are a finite resource. Eventually, we will leave. The project will wrap up, or the additional support will no longer be needed. If the efforts undertaken by your consulting team during their engagement are not well documented, and/or no training has taken place with your team you may find you have to continue to to unnecessarily rely upon your vendor. No documentation? No training? Get used to the extra bodies in the office.
This post was written by Jenny Couch. Couch is a project management consultant, and Providge’s Business Development Manager. She loves efficiency, to-do lists, and delivering projects on-time and on-budget.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Kathy Stershic of Dialog Communications continues her Brand Reputation in the Era of Data series by sharing principle two: be clear and accountable.
For starters, how many times have you actually read the whole privacy notice of a vendor, financial institution, or app you put on a mobile device? Ever? The reality is that almost no one reads them. They’re generally long, filled with legal jargon, and published in tiny, hard to read font. They all vary according to applicable law. They can be hard to find on web sites. The ‘opt out’ link is even harder to find.
Not reading them is no excuse for consumers who willingly enter a business relationship to claim ignorance or victimhood – or is it? When you accept a service, you are bound by the terms. But it is widely understood that privacy notices are very challenging for average people. There is a legal concept of responsible use of personal data that at least one legal expert I’ve heard speak says the U.S. Congress knows is going to need to be legislated. But who knows when that will be?
It is safe to say that for now that privacy notices are generally not working as they should. One respondent in Dialog’s recent study (a polished professional in a responsible job) reacted passionately with ‘privacy policies stink!’ as his gut opinion on this issue. So how can they be made better? And why should marketers even care?
The privacy notice presented to your customers is a legal covenant made with them. It establishes a bond that is integral to your brand reputation. But that doesn’t mean it has to read like a dry legal brief. Done right, it should reflect your organization’s values, its attitude toward customers and its interest in helping them understand terms of the business relationship – simply, clearly and transparently.
While privacy notices (also called statements and policies) must be developed and approved by those with legal and privacy expertise, Marketing has the communication expertise to simplify the language, put a customer advocate hat on, and collaborate with the legal team to make this customer-facing document as clear and friendly as it can be. Put it in words that read like how people talk. Make the mutual responsibilities clear and transparent. Spell out ‘what this means for us’, ‘what this means for you’, and what actionable options people have to empower control.
Make the notice readily accessible. Some of Dialog’s study respondents even suggested reminding them of the covenant every time they interact with a site or an app. Right up front. Plainly. And if a policy changes, what has changed should be immediately pointed out, allowing customers to opt out of the new terms on the spot. (By the way, changes should never be made retroactive, but that’s for another discussion).
Then consumers – read them! As a few of Dialog’s respondents willingly owned, users have responsibility in this game. You get something for what you give up – money or information. But it’s a choice. You can always choose not to use an app or a service. Last year, when Facebook spun off Messenger, I went to add it on my smartphone to see a pending message. But then I read the notice of what I would be agreeing to in doing so – giving Facebook access to all of my non-Messenger text messages! (Why do they need that? How many of you saw that?) Messenger did not get added to my phone, and I still manage to communicate with my loved ones anyway.
Beyond your external notice, make sure you have clear internal privacy policies. Then make sure everyone in your business is trained on them. Remind employees often to act with responsibility and accountability. And apply those policies consistently. Breaking the established customer bond is a quick way to kill trust and damage your brand. Clarity and accountability will strengthen it.
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This week on NVTC’s blog, NVTC member company Robert Half discusses huge changes the past two decades have brought to database administrators and the IT industry.
To make the best decisions, organizations big and small depend on the data their systems collect on customers and internal operations. And they need someone to keep them in touch with all that information. Enter the database administrator. But today’s database admin is not the admin of the 1990s. The last two decades have brought huge changes to the IT industry. Let’s take a look at how these changes have evolved the database administrator role.
Before the data-driven Web
In the early days of computing, data and the systems it was stored and processed on were synonymous. There were no “database administrators” because the database was the system and applications themselves. The specialized role of database admin developed as operating systems became more generic and database technology grew into a separate application running on top of an operating system. Organizations needed someone to manage increasing amounts of data stored in mainframes and client/server applications. The database admin role developed into a gatekeeper and caretaker, ensuring that the data was properly maintained and helping programmers to work with it.
The Web fuels big demand
Databases did not play much of a role in the early days of the Web. However, once web development technologies improved enough to easily connect web sites to databases, the need for more database administrators became obvious. Web projects took weeks or months to build in stark contrast to the years it would take for a mainframe or client/server application to be built. With such rapid development, database administrators often found themselves trying to corral dozens of developers and applications to comply with data integrity and security standards. Since many of these web developers got their start inweb design or as “web masters,” lacking substantial experience or knowledge in database design or security principles, database administrators had to work even harder to keep things running smoothly.
Over time, the programming languages, frameworks and techniques used for web development became much more supportive of sound database design. Object/relational mapping (ORM) systems such asHibernate and Entity Framework automatically enforced best practices and greatly reduced the need for programmers to directly write database queries. The reduced exposure to direct database access made it easier for database administrators to see what code was accessing the database and to ensure that it met organizational needs and standards.
NoSQL databases, big data and the cloud
In the last few years, NoSQL databases, the big data movement and the cloud have all morphed the database admin’s role. NoSQL databases relieve many of the traditional issues of the database administrator by focusing less on structure and data relations, and shifting significant amounts of control over data into the hands of application developers.
Big data technologies have moved into the space traditionally occupied by data warehouses and made analysis faster and more capable. Like NoSQL databases, big data technologies have empowered technology professionals to perform significant amounts of work themselves and allow database administrators to focus on improving performance and finding better solutions.
Cloud applications have changed the database administrator’s job as well. As organizations put more data in applications outside the firewall, database admins have had to find ways to enable integrations to work with these applications and still maintain security and data integrity. Use of cloud applications has decentralized some data and pushed it into specialized silos outside the database administrator’s reach, making it more difficult to see what data is stored where. At the same time, organizations often still have their most critical data stored in traditional relational databases. The database administrator of today is adaptive and knowledgeable about multiple types of data storage and maintenance.
According to our Salary Guide, the average starting salary for database administrators is projected to increase 5.6% in 2016 to a range of $95,750 – $142,750 in the United States. Data experts will be in demand, along specialists in mobile and security, in the coming year. The major qualifications to become a database administrator are:
- A strong technical foundation in database structure, configuration, installation and practice
- Knowledge and experience in major relational database languages and applications, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and IBM DB2
- At least two years of postsecondary education is typically required
- Professional certifications from Microsoft, Oracle and others
- Attention to detail, a strong customer service orientation and the ability to work as part of a team
Data storage has dramatically changed over time from mainframes to databases to the cloud. But as long as there’s data, that data will need to be managed. The database administrator role is not going to lose steam any time soon.
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