Succession is everything. Sooner or later, every company will have to face it. And for many SMEs in this country, in the not too distant future. According to estimates by the Bonn Institute for SME Research, around 190,000 company successions are due to take place between 2022 and 2026 because the management is leaving. The figures vary greatly from state to state – Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg are most affected. Due to demographic factors, the number of handovers per year tends to increase. Since most companies are family businesses, the internal family handover is the number one succession solution. But what happens if there are no competent descendants willing to lead the company? Then there are two options: Management buy-in (MBI) and management buy-out (MBO). What sounds complicated is actually quite simple: In an MBI, the company is sold to an external management, i.e. to a third party. And in the case of an MBO, the company is sold to management from within the company, for example to the management or employees. Whether the succession can be arranged within the family, within the company or outside the company, and which succession solution is best in each case, depends on the individual factors of the company.
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Does HR management still handle a lot of time-consuming, administrative work? Then it’s high time to change that. Societal changes such as the shortage of skilled workers or digitalization are presenting human resources management (HRM) with a major change process. HR must continue to evolve – just like all other areas of business. And technologies make an important contribution to this development. Digitization makes many of the processes more consistent, transparent and error-free. It is a must for all companies that want to develop positively and ensure future-proof HR management. In the HR area, the right software can take away many administrative, time-consuming processes, so that HR managers can devote more time to their employees. And the employees themselves also benefit in many ways from digitized and individualized processes in their everyday work. But as often as one hears and reads about the need for digitalization, so little has actually happened in many companies.
ESG is not a trend, but the way to responsibly shape the future. But what about ESG compliance in your own company? ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and medium-sized companies are confronted with this in many areas. A sustainable ESG concept helps a company to define and achieve its sustainability goals, to be attractive to banks and to increase the value of the company. When developing and implementing such an individual concept, many questions arise that need to be clarified. A systematic and structured approach ensures the necessary transparency here.
We don’t like to paint the devil on the wall. Rather, we think that part of risk management is to ensure the ability of an owner or a partner to act even if the person is unable to act himself at the moment. Illness and accidents are just two examples. The roles that an entrepreneur has as owner, managing director or partner must also be fulfilled in this situation – but by whom and on what basis? This is where the entrepreneurial power of attorney helps.
Strategy, liquidity, earnings: a company crisis can have various causes. Well-established crisis compliance shows the right steps to take in the individual situation. The risk of a crisis has increased significantly in recent years and more recently against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Ukraine war – even for seasoned companies. Moreover, in times of numerous high-profile corporate scandals, the liability claims of boards for misconduct have come into focus. Against this background, crisis compliance management is currently experiencing a strong upswing.
Introducing new processes, mastering transformations, overcoming challenges: A company that is intensively concerned with itself can be highly satisfied with its performance. But where is the customer? The needs of customers change at least as fast as the markets. A company must keep up if it does not want to be left behind by the competition. This calls for a consistent change of perspective from time to time: the focus is not on the company and its products, but on the customer and his or her needs.
It is not about horror stories, of which we know many. It is solely about how you prepare your business for future developments and for the unpredictability of life. Succession is not only the planned end of your entrepreneurial activity, but also the abrupt, hopefully temporary loss of an entrepreneur. From the responsibility towards the ecosystem of your business follows the preparation for the worst-case scenario – even if it will hopefully never occur.
Some companies take what feels like an eternity to prepare their annual financial statements. Other companies have prepared their annual financial statements one month after the balance sheet date – often also certified by the auditor. The “fast close”, i.e., the rapid preparation and – if necessary – the audit of the annual financial statements, provides stakeholders with timely information on the company’s assets, financial and earnings situation. Whether banks, suppliers, or management – up-to-date reporting is a competitive advantage and thus a real SME issue. How do you achieve high speed for your annual financial statement?
“Organizations do not commit violations of the law or misconduct. These are committed by people in the organizations.”
Compliance combines goals and functions to comply with laws and rules in the company and to create the framework that misconduct is avoided. In practice, compliance looks different for every company: Of course, every company has to adhere to the legal provisions, thus acts “compliantly” per se. But for a craft business, other laws and internal rules are important than for an IT company or a logistics company. All internal rules that go beyond the law are formed from industry practices, stakeholder expectations and corporate values.
Our office – a mini-campus for a few hours: We were delighted to welcome five students and their course director Professor Dr. Stäudner from the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences for Management (HdWM) to our Karlsruhe location on Thursday, 3 February 2022. The occasion was the presentation of a project that the students had worked out according to the task of THE MAK`ED TEAM.
