IMA - New Orleans Chapter

Report says Louisiana ranks high for entrepreneurs

2008-04-24T12:08:00.000-05:00

Report says Louisiana ranks high for entrepreneurs

Louisiana was tied for fourth in a survey of entrepreneurial activity by states, with 440 people starting businesses out of every 100,000 adults. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, found that Louisiana and Tennessee had the same rate of startups in 2007. Idaho, the District of Columbia and Arizona were tied for first, with 460 startups per 100,000 adults. West Virginia was ranked last, with 80 entrepreneurs out of 100,000.

Top 100 New Orleans area private companies generate $11.1 Billion

2008-03-18T08:11:00.004-05:00

This week, New Orleans CityBusiness came out with its annual listing of the top 100 New Orleans Area private companies. Below is the introduction to the report by New Orleans Publishing Group Editor Terry O'Connor. The publication can be viewed at http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/.

2007 was another banner year for the top 100 private companies in the New Orleans metro region.

The Top 100 reflects a diversified economy with health care, food, investments, construction, auto sales, ocean transportation, life insurance, manufacturing and mens accessories all represented in the top 10.

Seventy-one of the top 100 private companies increased revenues compared with 69 each of the past two years. The total amount of revenue was an all-time record for the CityBusiness Top 100 Private Company Report at $11.1 billion.

The revenue record is the fourth in a row for New Orleans-area private companies following previous top marks of $8.9 billion in 2006, $7.31 billion in storm-interrupted 2005 and $6.72 billion in total revenues generated in 2004.

Construction companies continue to profit from post-Katrina reconstruction and the ripple effect is spilling into other sectors. Engineers and health care work generated great revenues as well.
The construction industry leader remains Boh Bros. Construction Co., which now ranks No. 4 among all New Orleans-area private companies with $425 million, off 5.5 percent from its record $450 million last year.

A record 25 New Orleans-area private companies cracked the $100 million mark in 2007 led as usual by Ochsner Health System at $2.887 billion.

The CityBusiness Top 100 Private Companies Report reflects how a region heavily dependent on small and privately held businesses is doing as a whole.

CityBusiness coverage of business trends and private companies includes the Top 100 list, which covers a wide range of industries.

Go See Your New Orleans Hornets!

2008-01-30T16:55:00.001-06:00

As many of you know, the New Orleans Hornets are on "attendance watch" for the remainder of this season and next season. While there is much work to be done to achieve the attendance mark, set in the Hornet's new lease, the good news is that the product is awesome.

In fact, a sportswriter recently called this team the best sports team in the history of New Orleans, which is not farfetched considering they are 32-12, have won 9 games in a row and are now leading the challenging Western Conference. The Hornets have a spirited young team led by an MVP candidate point guard in Chris Paul. This club is fun to watch.

As a New Orleans non-profit association, we are urging you to make a difference and attend a few games -- it is important to New Orleans. Price is no object. Tickets start at an NBA low of $10 a ticket, and $40 a ticket in the lower bowl. The team has 17 home games remaining this year and the national media will be judging our recovery, in part, on the attendance at these games.

Lets do our part as the team gears up for an exciting playoff run and go watch this team play. We haven't seen many winning teams in New Orleans sports history, so lets take advantage of it!

www.hornets.com

When was the last time you updated your resume?

2008-01-28T13:26:00.000-06:00

IMA members - when was the last time you updated your resume?

Start 2008 of right by participating in

Operation Resume Update 2008!

To thank you for your membership in the IMA, the New Orleans chapter, in conjunction with the recruiting managers and staffing professionals at Robert Half Finance and Accounting and Accountemps, is please to offer you a free resume review. The process will involve uploading your resume via the Robert Half website and arranging a 30 minute consultation at the downtown New Orleans office.

Having an updated resume is not only helpful if you are interested in exploring new job opportunities! You may also need one for promotions, to share your credentials and background for professional organizations or board memberships, or if you are a source for published information.

After your resume consultation you will also be given access to the Robert Half Online Training. This program offers over 6,000 courses and access to FREE continuing professional education (CPE*) credits to keep our candidates one step ahead. The courses have FREE CPE* credits on over 800 courses, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week., personalized learning profile and option of having an online mentor, access to test-preparation software, relevant news, and reference books and articles. The Online courses include:

SAP business process
Project Management
Planning and managing a business strategy
developing a marketing strategy
Human Resourse Managment
Strategic Financial Analysis
Budgeting and Financial Management
Legal Compliance
Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced courses on the entire Microsoft Office Suite programs!

So don't delay, reply directly to carrie.lewis@roberthalf.com to start the process and be sure to tell your accounting contacts that by joining the IMA today they can take part in this offer as well! Click here to join the IMA today!

New Orleans A/R Firm Featured in Inc. Magazine

2007-12-27T10:45:00.000-06:00

From the January, 2008 edition of Inc. Magazine, the work of New Orleans-based "The Receivables Exchange" is featured. The article is reprinted below, but it can also be found here on Inc. Magazine's website:

Keith Voigts has cash flow on his mind. As CFO of iSeatz, Voigts needs to make sure the $5 million company has enough cash to pay the bills. But New Orleans-based iSeatz, which arranges travel packages for clients like Orbitz and Travelocity, has no collateral for a bank loan. And its customers sometimes take 90 days to pay up. Voigts has considered factoring--selling the company's receivables at a discount to get cash up-front. In the past, however, he has always avoided it because of its high costs and bad reputation. "I wouldn't say it's a shady business, but there's a stigma to it," he says.

Now Voigts is taking another look. iSeatz will be one of the first companies to list its invoices on The Receivables Exchange, or TRE, which is launching in the first quarter of 2008. Founded by Justin Brownhill and Nic Perkin, TRE aims to change the factoring model altogether. The exchange will allow companies to offer their receivables to dozens of factoring companies at once, along with hedge funds, banks, and other "liquidity providers," in TRE's parlance. These lenders will bid on the invoices, which can be sold in a bundle or one at a time. The increased competition, Brownhill and Perkin say, will make it easier and cheaper for growing companies to raise working capital. "We hope to allow companies to grow quicker, faster, better than they otherwise would," says Brownhill, the exchange's CEO. So far, several dozen companies--"issuers," in TRE's lingo--have signed up, with annual revenue ranging from $5 million to $100 million.

Factoring is an unloved form of financing, at least in the United States. It's often used by companies with poor credit or by businesses such as apparel manufacturers, which have to fill orders long before they get paid. But it's an expensive way to raise funds. Companies selling receivables generally pay a fee ranging from 2 percent to 7 percent of the total amount, according to Bert Goldberg, executive director of the International Factoring Association. If you pay a 2 percent fee to get funds 30 days in advance, it's equivalent to an annual interest rate of about 24 percent. No wonder, then, that in the U.S., factoring is often seen as the corporate equivalent of a check-cashing storefront in a battered neighborhood.

The industry's reputation has improved in recent years. But Brownhill and Perkin want the U.S. receivables market to look more like the market in Europe. The factoring market is still relatively immature in the U.S., partly because only a few big American banks, including Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and CIT (NYSE:CIT), are major players in the industry. For the most part, factoring remains a fragmented industry composed of many small players. Across the pond, by contrast, the major banks buy receivables. They tend to charge lower fees and offer a higher degree of credibility. In 2006, $127 billion of receivables were sold in the U.S., making it fourth in the world for factoring after the United Kingdom ($328 billion), Italy ($159 billion), and France ($132 billion), according to the trade group Factors Chain International. (FCI publishes the numbers in euros; we converted them using the exchange rate on the last business day of 2006.)

Brownhill and Perkin think Americans, given the right opportunity, would take to factoring much as they have taken to Ikea and H&M. Both co-founders know a thing or two about building businesses. Brownhill was an executive at Lava Trading, an equity and foreign exchange trading firm, and helped take it from 30 people to 300 before it was bought by Citigroup (NYSE:C), in 2004. Perkin, TRE's president, was head of global business development at Massive, a company that places ads in video games, until it was sold to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), in May 2006. The two have secured $4.2 million in financing from Prism VentureWorks and another seven-figure investment from Fidelity Ventures, an affiliate of the financial giant Fidelity Investments. Larry Cheng, a partner with Fidelity Ventures, says he was drawn to TRE's simplicity. "It's almost like eBay--post your invoice and let everyone bid on it," says Cheng.

The receivables industry has been jostled by a number of new players, bringing new models. The Trade Receivable Exchange, known as T-REX, was launched in May 2007. T-REX is an auction marketplace for all sorts of Chapter 11 bankruptcy claims. If one of your clients goes bankrupt, you could wait years for payment while the bankruptcy case works its way through the courts. T-REX allows you to get cash immediately by selling those receivables to hedge funds and other buyers, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, sometimes for almost the face value of the invoice. Another new company, Factorlane.com, is essentially a relationship broker that helps companies connect with factoring firms, known in the industry as factors.

But TRE aims to spur a major shift in the way the industry works. Unlike Factorlane, TRE allows you to sell just one receivable. Suppose a customer owes you $100,000 but won't pay for another 60 days--and you need cash now. Traditionally, you would shop around for a factoring provider, going through due diligence several times before settling on one company and developing a relationship. But with TRE, you have to go through the due diligence process only once, with the exchange. After you register your company online and upload your financial statements, TRE spends up to two weeks checking your credit rating, looking for unpaid debts, and searching bankruptcy records.

Once your application is approved, you can put up your receivables for bid. For that $100,000 invoice, you could get $98,000 or much less. TRE allows you to set a minimum bid, and if none of the bids reach that minimum, you can reject them all. But if the highest bid beats your minimum, it's automatically accepted. The winning lender sends the cash through TRE, which takes a commission of .25 to .5 percent. Six weeks later, when you receive payment from your client, you repay the factor the full $100,000--again through TRE, which takes another commission. You have essentially taken out a loan, with your receivable as collateral. The transaction is classified as a sale, not a loan, under Louisiana law. Nevertheless, unpaid accounts could land at a collection agency and would show up on your credit report.

Brownhill acknowledges that factors have some security concerns. They worry about buying fake invoices and may be reluctant to let TRE do their due diligence for them. Also, some factors are wary of letting the exchange disburse funds. "They're going to have to be able to do that efficiently and securely, so the liquidity providers know their investments are being monitored," says Pat Haney, president of Commercial Capital Lending, a factor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. TRE's founders hope the benefits for factors--a steady supply of high-quality receivables--will outweigh the potential downsides. And despite their concerns, Haney and about 10 other liquidity providers have decided to give it a shot.

The exchange faces other hurdles as well. Factoring has long been based on relationships; companies often form a partnership with a single factor, which purchases invoices on a regular basis. TRE may introduce factoring to a previously cynical group of business owners. But once they learn to love factoring, those companies could look outside of the exchange for a long-term relationship. "Companies that sell receivables are looking for trust," says T-REX founder David Williams. "An auction thrives when it's based only on price."

But Voigts, at iSeatz, says he's looking for a good deal, not an ongoing relationship. "I'd like to have the ability to have everybody bid on it," he says. Indeed, Brownhill thinks TRE's system will be too good for business owners to pass up. "We would like to think we're creating such a competitive environment that putting it up for bid is always the best way to do it," he says. "It's putting control back in the hands of the CFO."

The IMA Cost Management Group

2007-12-26T17:14:00.000-06:00

The Cost Management Group is open to all members of the IMA. Members have a variety of titles: controller, cost manager, vice president, accountant, and many more. What is more important than titles, however, is what they have in common: the desire to learn more about cost management, to network with others holding the same responsibilities, and to improve their performance so they can make a greater contribution to their companies' bottom line.

Membership in the Cost Management Group provides several options for acquiring current information and networking with peers, such as:

Reading Cost Management Update, the monthly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on what your counterparts in other companies are thinking and doing. Cost Management Update reports on surveys of members, who give their opinions on subjects such as performance measurement and reengineering tools. The newsletters also provide interviews with key executives, case studies, summaries of legislative and regulatory developments, and advice on managing your professional sphere.
Participating in surveys, to share your opinions and experiences with your colleagues. These survey results are widely reported in the media, enhancing the visibility and credibility of the Cost Management Group in the business community.
Utilizing our interactive online service known as the Cost Management Group E-Mail Exchange. If you're connected to the Internet, you're connected to hundreds of other Cost Management Group members. Obtaining helpful answers to your tough question or problem is as simple as sending one e-mail message to a central address, which is then distributed to all participating members. The responses you receive back from your colleagues will allow their experience to work for you.

If you are already an IMA member and would like to join a Member Interest Group, please call 1-800-638-4427, or by e-mail at ima@imanet.org. If you're not an IMA member please go to the IMA Membership Application. You can join a MIG at the same time.

The IMA Small Business Council

2007-11-20T15:58:00.000-06:00

We know that many of you work in smaller companies, where your responsibilities often spread far beyond the traditional areas of management and financial accounting. You've told us that your employers turn to you for advice on subjects as diverse as incentive plans, raising capital, setting credit policy and choosing insurance.

A surprising number of you are not only accountants, controllers or CFOs of small firms, you're also in charge of human resources or information technology-sometimes even both! You have to deal with the company owners and minority shareholders, outside accountants, bankers, brokers, insurance agents and more. Yet being in a small company can be more professionally isolating than in a large firm. There are fewer colleagues in your profession to bounce ideas off and sometimes no one to turn to for knowledgeable, impartial advice.

Many of you told us you would like a way to reach out to other IMA members in similar positions at other companies. And you wanted practical, how-to information that could help you handle your day-to-day responsibilities and decision-making. The result was the Small-Business Council.

The Small-Business Council focuses on the special needs of IMA members working in small firms. It also deals with the unique issues that arise in closely held companies, since many small companies are owned by one person, a family or a small group.

Membership in the Small-Business Council provides several options for acquiring current information and networking with peers, such as:

Reading Small-Business Update, the monthly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on what your counterparts in other companies are thinking and doing. Each month's issue covers different topics of interest to you. We welcome your responses to articles that appear in the newsletter, and are open to your suggestions for future articles. We want you to think of Small-Business Update as your newsletter.

Utilizing our interactive online service known as the Small-Business Council E-Mail Exchange. If you're connected to the Internet, you're connected to other Small-Business Council members. Obtaining helpful answers to your tough question or problem is as simple as sending one e-mail message to a central address, which is then distributed to all participating members. The responses you receive back from your colleagues will allow their experience to work for you.

If you are already an IMA member and would like to join a Member Interest Group, please call 1-800-638-4427, or by e-mail at ima@imanet.org. If you're not an IMA member please go to the IMA Membership Application. You can join a MIG at the same time.

The Controllers Council

2007-11-11T18:08:00.000-06:00

There are many benefits to membership in the Institute of Management Accountants, and one of them is the Controllers Council.

The Controllers Council is open to all members of the IMA. Members do not necessarily have the title of controller; they are also assistant controllers, vice presidents of finance, and chief financial officers, to name a few. What they do have in common is the desire to learn more about the contrtollership function, network with others holding the same responsibilities, and improve their performance so they can make a greater contribution to their companies' bottom line.

Membership in the Controllers Council gives you several ways to gain information and networking with peers, such as:

Reading Controllers Update, the monthly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on what your counterparts in other companies are thinking and doing. Controllers Update reports on surveys of members, who give their opinions on subjects ranging from the general economic outlook to the use of derivatives. The newsletters also provide interviews with key executives, case studies, summaries of legislative and regulatory developments, and advice on managing your professional sphere.

Participating in surveys, to share your opinions and experiences with your colleagues. These survey results are widely reported in the media, enhancing the visibility and credibility of the Controllers Council in the business community. You are welcome to view and/or participate in the most recent Controllers Council survey.

Utilizing our interactive online service known as the Controllers Council's E-Mail Exchange. If you're connected to the Internet, you're connected to hundreds of other Controllers Council members. Obtaining helpful answers to your tough question or problem is as simple as sending one e-mail message to a central address, which is then distributed to all participating members.

The responses you receive back from your colleagues will allow their experience to work for you.

New Orleans: A Startup Laboratory

2007-11-10T15:50:00.000-06:00

For those who missed it, this past August, a BusinessWeek article featured the growing number of startup companies coming to the New Orleans area post-Katrina. The article can be found here:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2007/sb20070823_490984.htm

One of the companies featured was The Receivables Exchange, and we were fortunate enough to have a representative of their firm at our October 24th general membership meeting. The Receivables Exchange introduces an evolution in business-to-business financing, connecting businesses to a nationwide network of lenders ready to compete in real-time to fund receivables.

More information on this company can be found here:
http://www.receivablexchange.com/

University of New Orleans Research Project

2007-11-06T16:54:00.000-06:00

A graduate student at UNO is seeking assistance from New Orleans IMA members. Please review the question below, and if you can be of assistance, reply directly to Johnathan Morpurgo.

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I am an accounting student at the University of New Orleans and would like to get the input of controllers on a software issue:

1. What software do you use for data collection and process improvement?
2. How satisfied are you with your data management system and how much did you pay for it?
3. What do you see as the common program & level of satisfaction in your particular industry?

I am creating a commercialization plan for a new data engine platform developed in UNO’s computer science department. If you are willing to give me more detailed information, please email me a phone number and best time so I may call you for a brief lead user interview. This can lead to free customized software for you, as well as some very happy graduate students. I need this information this week, so I ‘m sorry about the quick turn-around.

Thanks for your help!

Johnathan Y. Morpurgo
Graduate Assistant
Center for Innovation
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana 70148
504.280.6282
j.morpurgo@uno.edu

Welcome to the IMA New Orleans Blog!

2007-11-06T07:38:00.000-06:00

This is the first posting to the blog of the New Orleans Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants. Our time lately has been involved in making individuals aware of our chapter activity, and working with the national IMA organization on a variety of issues.