Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

Imagine this – you are a company with hundreds of thousands of customers. As part of doing business, you also have multi-year contracts with each of your customers.

Now imagine planning for the new revenue recognition standards. I know … it’s daunting. 

With 2015 almost in the books, it’s time for most companies to focus on getting their Form 10-Ks issued and to begin planning for 2016.  To help prepare for both of those tasks, we need not look much further than the comments provided by Mary Jo White, SEC chairwoman, and others during the December AICPA Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments.

The HORNE PMM team has been sharing its insights and ideas for a little more than six months, and we hope we’ve provided you with a valuable resource. Sometimes we write about emerging trends, sometimes we write about what we’ve learned, and sometimes we write about issues that can keep your company out of trouble.

As the unemployment rate declines and the labor market tightens, attracting and keeping talented staff members is becoming a serious issue. It’s particularly problematic for smaller businesses or those located outside of major metropolitan areas. We’ve noticed fierce competition for key talent in the industries we serve, as well as in our own industry, and I’d like to suggest a strategy for recruiting and retaining effective employees without a substantial outlay of cash – stock-based compensation.

Fall is just around the corner, and as a chief financial officer, it’s not too soon to start thinking about the challenges your business will face in 2016.

As I work with companies that are growing and facing new challenges, I am often asked if they should create an audit committee, and the answer is – it depends. I would like to present some recommendations that can help you decide if you should establish an audit committee in your company. Of course, these suggestions apply only to private companies, as SEC registrants are required to have independent audit committees.

According to a recent article in Fortune magazine, the SEC questioned 88 percent of companies in the technology, media and telecommunications industries that went public in 2014 regarding their revenue recognition policies.

Describing today’s business environment as complex is an understatement. In fact, a recent survey showed that four out of five CFOs rank internal complexity as the number one challenge facing their organizations. Adding the ever-evolving external factors impacting your business increases the challenge even more. Yet, you are asked to manage and succeed in just such an environment, and the risks are often huge.