Customer Service – Cases of truly despicable service

Customer Service, part of the value proposition of any company. Here is my story with three organizations, large companies, listed companies. All three need to improve their customer service, but two of them provided “truly despicable service”. Customer Service stories I recently had fraud on my American Express Card. The responses by Google and Uber can only be […]

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Startups need a CFO from the inception

A recent report from the Financial Executives International’s Financial Executives Research Foundation has some interesting highlights. The report outlines those startups that bring on a CFO sooner than later do better. Startups and the CFO “For a startup company the CFO is probably going to sit at the intersection of finance and strategy as well as, depending on the […]

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You will be hacked!

I just attended a seminar on CyberSecurity given by David P. Weber, JD, CFE. Mr. Weber was the former Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and now is a Professor and Academic Director for the Fraud Management Programs at the University of Maryland Robert H Smith School of Business. His watch words […]

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Marketing: Obvious false statements just doesn’t help!

Marketing I just received this email… and it made me chuckle….  From: Eric Johnson <ejohnson@usbfund.com> Subject: * SBA.NET.WEB approved at 3.75% Good morning Wayne! Just wanted to follow-up on our conversation that we had last November 11th, in regards to SBA.NET.WEB’s new projects. We ran a D&B analysis and you scored 76 out of 80 which places you […]

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Business expenses and employee use of credit cards

Liz Ryan posted an exceptionally good poll about business expenses and employee use of credit cards. Issues were raises from financial inequality between employees and whether they owned a credit card, and if they did, how much credit was available. I, as a CFO, has found company credit cards a disaster, and as I explained I […]

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As CEOs push for office returns, CFOs don’t mind staying put

Published in CFODive Sept 2021 I would expand this to many employees (in general, situations will differ) whose presence in an office isn’t due to logistics (i.e., warehouse), handling actual paper, or individual preference. We’ve also seen a shift toward lower wages for those who will be working remote.  This makes no sense from a […]

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Investor shopping; you need a compelling pitch deck

Businesses are at one point in their life or another looking for new investors. An Investor is looking for good investments. Start-up’s need capital. Therefore, they are looking for seed capital or an “A” round financing. More mature Entrepreneurial companies are looking for further financing. Some are starting to look at that IPO; other is […]

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Revenue Streams: have you ever thought about them?

I was reading an article in CFO.com, titled Services With A (CFO) Smile. It was about revenue streams. It got me thinking. Revenue Streams I cannot remember when a conversation has ever ensued that discussed revenue streams in this context. The differentiation of products and services to obtain revenue at different points in the fiscal […]

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