Business Turnaround: An Overview of How to Best Enhance Your Company's Finances

by Thayne Carper

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Published on this site: February 24th, 2010 - See more articles from this month

A successful business turnaround requires the owner to take certain steps to become a profitable enterprise. By taking the following actions, you can reorganize your company and produce positive cash flow.

1. Good decision making requires a stable environment:
   
   In order to transform your business into a more profitable enterprise and achieve business turnaround, you must take action and stabilize the situation. In doing so, you will have the opportunity to make good decisions that benefit your company. It is essential that you create and then maintain a positive cash balance; otherwise, your business can fall into serious debt from which it will never recover. This kind of cash management will keep your business alive as you make decisions that affect your company in the short and long term.
   
   
2. Discover the root cause of your company's issues:
   
   You will not achieve a business turnaround without identifying and then repairing the problems your company faces. You must carefully study why your business has financial problems and use comparative financial analysis when making this determination. It may be your costs are too excessive when compared to revenue. Perhaps an unexpected competitor has taken some of your sales.
   
   
3. Make the necessary changes to make your company profitable:
   
   You may have to reorganize your business in order to become profitable. You must identify which products or services make money and which don't. The products or services that are profitable are the foundation of your reorganization; you should maintain those while discarding the ones that are not money-making.
   
   
4. Create a plan that your creditors will back:
   
   The relationship between your business and its creditors must remain positive. You must keep them updated on your objectives, forecasts, and how you will change your company so that it becomes profitable. Creditors want to know your business turnaround plan; they want to trust the debtors are doing all they can so that the creditors will receive a good return on their investments. For this reason, you must apprise them of any kind of business turnaround plan so they can make any necessary concessions.
   
   
5. Prioritize how you will reimburse your creditors:
   
   A good business turnaround plan would have you sort your creditors in two groups: those that you depend on and those you can replace. It is important that the business owner maintains strong connections with the first group, whereas the second group is not a priority, and you can consider hiring a debt negotiator to get out of these debts.
   
   
6. Carefully execute the plan:
   
   Business owners often fail to execute their business turnaround plans. Such plans require persistence, yet business owners sometimes grow impatient and turn back to sales instead of focusing on their cash flow and working with their creditors. As a result, nothing will change and there will be no real recovery.
   
   
7. Expand or sell the business:
   
   Finally, business owners should know when to maintain the company and when to sell. After using your business turnaround plan, the company will, ideally, become profitable. The business owner will then have learned from previous mistakes, and the company will thrive and grow. However, the owner may simply lose interest in the business and should sell while it remains a profitable enterprise.

Thayne Carper spent 4 years of college competing in student business plan competitions. He's never won a business plan competition and was dropped from his college's entrepreneurial program for lacking potential. Today, he is one of the youngest published experts on the topic of business turnarounds and cost reduction. Visit his website lower supply costs up to 30% for a copy of his report "The Definitive Guide to Doubling Your Profits in less than 6 Months" and learn how you can easily lower supply and service costs up to 30% without hiring a consultant. Learn more: http://www.ThayneCarper.com/.