Blogs

You may be a serial entrepreneur but most business owners have built just the one business during their careers and are therefore not familiar with the end-game: how to exit.

All humans have to exit at one point in time. As do agency owners. Whether or not that point is now, owners should know the 10 lessons we've distilled from years of concluded or abandoned deals; knowing them and acting on them can increase the day-to-day performance of your agency and enhance its valuation demonstrably.

Enterprise resources and assets rarely remain optimal through periods of rapid or long-term sustained growth and this is especially true of IT systems. Legacy systems that once coped now creak and refuse to speak to other systems particularly within acquisitive groups. Meanwhile senior managers demand more and better information to aid decision-making. So the nettle of systems change has to be grasped: a systems/process specification process provides the basis for a systems search & selection process followed by an implementation project. All time consuming and expensive so why bother?

Starting a new business is an interesting process and can be daunting if not approached correctly. One of the secrets to setting up a new business is to take it one step at a time; otherwise it may appear to be an obstacle too great to climb.

One of the key aspects of any business is its back office function and processes. This is where the recording of all financial activities of the business takes place, including, the invoicing of sales, the collection of debts and the payment of all costs incurred in running your business.

The back office functionality and processes required will depend on the nature of the business, the intricacies of the service or product, the complexity of the supply chain and the delivery mechanism of the good or service being delivered to the end customer.

I have been involved in procurement processes for finance systems that have taken from two weeks to four months and which have resulted in the successful selection of a system that is fit for purpose.

Enterprise resources and assets rarely remain optimal through periods of rapid or long-term sustained growth and this is especially true of IT systems. Legacy systems that once coped now creak and refuse to speak to other systems particularly within acquisitive groups. Meanwhile senior managers demand more and better information to aid decision-making. So the nettle of systems change has to be grasped: a systems/process specification process provides the basis for a systems search & selection process followed by an implementation project. All time consuming and expensive so why bother?

Conversations with private business owners often finish with this question: “Which of these two options should I pursue?”. Managers that invested an overwhelming part of their life in building and running a business, often at the expense of family or personal hobbies, will eventually reach a point where this question is paramount in their minds. The only problem is that this is the wrong question: these are not two options or two alternatives. Actually, one depends on the other.

Since the merger with Omnicom was called-off Publicis has quickly resumed its acquisitive ways with the latest and biggest deal announced this week. An all-cash price of USD3.7bn has been agreed by the boards of Sapient and Publicis but with Sapient's market value only USD2.46bn the Publicis chief Maurice Levy has gone to extraordinary lengths to bolster the group's digital revenues and reach.

Edward Lorenz coined the expression of ‘The Butterfly Effect’ to describe the consequence that a seemingly minor action such as a butterfly’s wing flapping could have on triggering a hurricane in another part of the world.

One of the consequences of the failed Omnicom/Publicis merger is increased M & A activity at the SME level. This is psarticularly the case for Publicis which wants to increase revenues generated from "digital" businesses considerably over the next 24 months.