Business Analytics & Data Management

Earlier this year, I was chatting with a prospective client whose professional experience looked much like mine, and many of our consultants, before coming to Spinnaker: a senior VP from a fortune 500 financial institution who’s hired countless consultants to solve complex problems.

Steady and reliable cash flow is essential to a company’s daily operations. Knowing when to expect revenue gives owners confidence in paying their own expenses, but understanding cash flow cycles is just as important to business growth – and having a buffer in case of a crisis. Good cash flow analysis can confirm that there’s money to keep the lights on, but deeper analysis can uncover ways to best capture cash from every revenue stream.

Not too long ago, banks were concentrating on how to charge and keep more – more of the fees customers pay to use an account or as a penalty for not holding up their end of the deal.

Before I invite guests to visit, I always clean my house. I tell companies striving for a winning digital transformation, particularly in my industry niche, to do the exact same thing. 

Taking the time to look at where you’ve been and where you want to be headed can ensure you chart the right course going forward.

It's fair to say that most business owners are working toward greater profitability and growth. And while growth presents businesses and their employees with countless opportunities, the downside is the potential of having to stroke a big check to the Internal Revenue Service come tax time. Pile on ever-changing tax codes, exemptions, regulations and deadlines – and it’s no wonder that everyone is reaching for headache relief during tax season.

Think about how much the tried-and-true adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” says.

For many small and early-stage businesses, serving customers and running day-to-day operations can be enough to overwhelm the day. But it’s critical that these organizations carve out time to tend to their financial health daily, or at the bare minimum several times a week. With so many different metrics to track, it’s important to identify those that give you a line of sight into how your business is performing, as well as those that help you pinpoint issues brewing below the surface.

In the consulting world, arriving at the endpoint is an inherent piece of the project. But amidst the inertia of reaching the goal line, an effective handoff can easily become an afterthought, even when there’s a big X on the calendar reminding you of your endpoint.  While there is no silver bullet for how and when to push the closeout button, we have identified several considerations based on our experience. If you can be cognizant of these milestones along the journey, especially during the home stretch, you’ll avoid unnecessary pain and end on a high note.

As the world braces itself for the economic impact of COVID-19, banks are looking to credit risk models in an attempt to quickly understand and forecast the effects of such rapid change. But putting these models to work is no easy task.

Normally, we don’t get confirmation from the National Bureau of Economic Research on whether we’ve hit a recession until long after its start. Whether that confirmation comes sooner during the COVID-19 crisis is beside the point – many experts agree that as of March 2020 we’ve entered a recession.

Where are you on the path to making more informed, data-driven decisions? Have you identified the metrics? Do you have the right people? And most importantly, do you trust your data?