Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

Few things can match the excitement of the first day of business. For many people, it’s the realization of a career-long dream to be their own boss. Even for the serial entrepreneur who has been through the process multiple times, there’s still an adrenaline rush when the website goes live and/or the doors unlock and all of the planning and preparation comes together.

Just about every business that creates a business plan will project some growth. While it’s important to set an intention around growth at the start of the year, it takes more than just a number in a forecast to successfully grow throughout the year. In many cases, it will take new money to make new money. Does your business plan account for the funding necessary to support your growth projections?

In today’s business environment, market disruptions are a persistent topic of strategic planning discussions. Automation, artificial intelligence and increased connectivity will continue to drive our growth strategies, but it is crucial that organizations consider cybersecurity evolution in the strategic plans. Below are 4 evolving areas that will drive your organization’s success or peril over the next 3-5 years.

As we continue to explore the top middle market CFO challenges for 2017, it is clear that the CFO’s role is changing to focus more on providing strategic guidance to support the organization’s growth and decision making. Last week’s blog addressed how CFOs need to optimize working capital and to effectively accomplish this requires executing real time data analysis and predictive analytics to make the best decisions from the information that is available.

Developing a cybersecurity strategy can give your organization the foundation and mandate to develop good policies and procedures for improving resilience. As 2016 comes to an end and we begin looking into 2017, I want to reflect and provide a few observations of strategic cybersecurity mistakes we have seen this year resulting in major losses for many organizations.