Ivara Commercial...stay tuned for your regularly scheduled program

Just to provide you with more background on what I do and where I work now I thought I would blog a little information on my company, Ivara. I am the VP Finance and Admin at Ivara Corp (parent company of Aladon LLC).

Ivara is an asset reliability software company located in Burlington, Ontario just outside of Toronto. Our target market is large fixed plant, continuous manufacting facilities principally in the metals and mining, pulp & paper, power generation and utilities and CPG verticals.

Our value proposition is that our software coupled with our implementation and maintenance methodology improve business performance by preventing industrial equipment failure while increasing production and lowering costs. Ivara was started in 1996 and is backed by two VC's (Almasa and Propulsion Ventures based in Montreal, Quebec).

As in any growing business our customer's success is directly correlated to our success. Success means different things for our customer depending on their strategic and competitive position in their market. In some cases we have worked with customers to reduce maintenance expenses as they try to make adjustments in their cost structure. In some cases we work with customers to drive more throughput with the same asset base through improved uptime and productivity of their assets. In all cases we strive to reduce the maintenance cost per unit of production whether they can sell as much as they can produce or they are slowing down production.

By analyzing why, where and how a customer's equipment fails, Ivara's software drives the right work at the right time.

Ivara has a proven solution and I am thrilled to be part of what we all see as a huge opportunity in an expanding and still underserviced space in the software landscape.

If anyone would like more info on what we do check out the website, contact me directly and I would be happy to set up a time to discuss more in a one on one setting or with a larger group at your organization.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled business and finance updates.....

Novell to Acquire Data Center Management Leader PlateSpin

Just wanted to send out (late) congratulations to a couple of friends and a really successful company.

Platespin (http://www.platespin.com/) based in Toronto is a 5 year old virtualization play that was sold to Novell for $205M recently. Success story's and especially those that involve really good people and friends are always great to hear and to share. While at Open Text (http://www.opentext.com/) I worked with Efrem Ainsley, CFO of Platespin and Dan Budlovsky, Director of Finance at Platespin and it is no surprise to me that both these guys helped drive huge success at Platespin. Great guys who work hard and are really smart.

Congratulation to everyone involved at Platespin including VC's Insight (from NewYork), Covington, Skylon and Four Quarters, well done.

Press Release http://http//www.platespin.com/corporate/newsdetails.aspx?id=269

External Relationships - Banking

Your banker is among the many key relationships you must build and develop as the CFO. It is important to understand and treat your and your Company's relationship with your bank as a Partnership. While you clearly have needs that you are approaching the bank for assistance with, they have needs as well. For smaller companies who have on-demand LOC's collateralized with everything under the sun as well as personal guarantees, it is more important to build the relationship and look to shed some of the restriction that the bank has on you. This can happen over time. Business performance, consistency where possible (tongue planted firmly in cheek) and communication are the keys to building and evolving your relationship with the bank. Communicate, communicate, communicate. At least quarterly you should be meeting with your bank to review the statements for the past quarter and provide them with color (see earlier post on why it is important to know your business and its drivers) on what has happened and what you see happening over the next quarter. It is really important that you not surprise your banker. Most good bank relationship managers especially on the tech side have seen pretty much every situation that your Balance Sheet is going to go through and can help you navigate the bank's sore points and keep you on side. The biggest problems with the bank always happen when you have presented them with a glass half full picture of the business and then disappont with no warning. Be open, honest, realistic and treat the relationship and the person with respect and they will go a long way to assist you through your turbulent times. They also have a lot of contacts that you can leverage to help resolve a miriad of different business issues. Some good folks I have had the pleasure of dealing with on the tech side who really understand the space and will go to bat to help you and your business are Jerry Tsao at RBC in the KW Knowledge Based Industry group (www.rbc.com). RBC has been around the tech space in Canada for quite a while and stayed the course several years ago when many of the big banks bailed on the tech sector. As a result of their commitment to the space they are probably the largest player for funded tech companies. More recently I have met with Rob Rosen at Comerica Bank (www.comerica.com) in their Technology and Life Sciences Division. Comerica seems to be very aggressive in the Canadian market right now and despite their legacy in the auto industry they have expanded into many different verticals through acquisition and aggressiveness in the market. If you would like an introduction to both or either please drop me a note. The important message to note is that honest communication with your banker can help you manage many challenges you will face. Your banker wants you to be successful and you are on the same team. Let them help where they can, provide guidance where appropriate and treat them respectfully. This won't necessarily keep your Company out of hot water but it will provide you with a respected business partner who will help make your life easier.

Cash is King

It seems simple enough to understand but the amount of time and effort spent managing cash in a business can be quite astonding. More than sales and pipelines and forecasts CASH is the most important thing to plan and intimately know in your business as a CFO. Knowing in detail what is coming in and what is going out on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is absolutely critical to you, your founder/CEO and your VC's. There is no such thing as the micromanagement of cash. Raising cash is never easy and in today's market even more so which means being aware of your burn rate and the length of your lifeline is imperative. But how??? This is the fun part! As CFO's we MUST get out of the office and really truly understand the business. In order to plan and manage the cash we need to have a fairly intimate understanding of every functional area in our business. We need to be our CEO's right arm and his/her business partner. The more we engage and know about the business the more we can leverage all our other skills in bringing value added feedback, thoughts and direction to our organizations. Try to do a walkabout at least twice a day and interact with your peers to understand the business through their eyes so you can improve the focus of your eyes!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog on all things finance and business related in SME's. I specifically live in the software world but many of the topics and comments are relevant in any industry. Early stage companies have a whole host of day to day issues that must be dealt with, avoided, managed and planned that are unique from those of some of our larger friends. I have many years (and scars) invested in attempting to navigate the landmines and pitfalls along the way. As many of you will know, heading up Finance in a small or medium sized company is a role that requires flexibility, creativity and the ability to wear many hats. In the upcoming posts I will blog on (hopefully) areas of interest and relevance to others in this space. I hope you enjoy my thoughts and insights please send comments, argue my positions, call me out, debate and we will all learn from each other.