Private Equity Investing, Portfolio Management and Advisory - Khalil-Ghibran

  Equity financing is available in two forms – public and private. Public equity is obtained by offering shares of your company in the open market in exchange for capital. This is referred to as an initial public offering (IPO). Once you take your company public, investors are able to purchase shares of your company and become shareholders or owners of your company.  They are repaid through profit sharing such as dividends or when the stock is sold. Private equity comes in many forms such as friends and family, angel investors and venture capital. Angel investors are individuals who provide capital to start-up companies in exchange for partial ownership and control of the business. Most new businesses obtain their first round of financing from angels who may invest from $2,500 to a million.  The angel market is approximately 5-10 times greater than the institutional venture capital pool. Venture capital firms (VCs) have a large amount of capital and seek out companies in w

  Working in a family-owned business has inherent value but also inherent danger. Ninety percent of the companies in the U.S. are family-owned, but less than one third is able to survive succession from the first to the second generation. This should be a warning flag to all family-owned businesses. On the other hand, the numbers show that nearly half of the country’s Gross National Product is derived from family businesses. With statistics like these, it is essential to understand how the unique family/business dynamic most successfully operates. Simply put, a family business has two or more family members directly involved; or when the majority of the ownership lies within a family. Ideally, the benefits of a family-owned business are loyalty, pride and common goals. Likewise, the family shares a common income, which poses special challenges to running a business. The perils of family-owned businesses stem from joining two different dynamics: the familial and the business. Both syste

  With the deepening relationship between IT and the business process, IT architectures have a big impact on the ability of the business to compete and change. Most organizations find it difficult to implement new outward-facing business processes. They may find their business logic is hidden in legacy applications that are needed to sustain established operations. An architected approach to IT operations is needed in order to balance the requirement for a stable IT infrastructure with the agility needed to move the business ahead in a rapidly changing, virtual, and dynamic environment.  Operations architecture will not just enable and stabilize the business transformation but will be a key part of the enterprise architecture. This will enable enterprises to lower their cost of operation and improve the availability and performance of a business process in a rapidly changing, virtual, and dynamic environment. Defining operations architecture can help break down the walls that exist bet

  The increasing sophistication of logistics and distribution activities is leading more and more warehouse and distribution managers to invest in transportation assets – such as plastic tote bins, bottle pallets and roll cages. Being specifically designed for a particular application they can significantly reduce handling operations and costs.  They can also be used to carry information such as contents, quantity, destination and storage requirements. Many retailers use hundreds of thousands of these containers in their supply chain, representing a significant financial investment; losses can be a significant financial burden. To cover this cost suppliers are often charged for their use.  Due to their cost, these assets are designed to circulate within the distribution network resulting in a need for some means of tracking their whereabouts. These assets lend themselves to automated control and tracking.  IT systems provide essential tracking tools for these assets, monitoring multipl

  Business intelligence describes a toolset and process, which systematically organizes and displays your company data. Intelligence systems assist you in making strategic and operative decisions based on detailed analytic data and reports. Implementing a business intelligence solution not only requires programming qualifications but also necessitates a detailed understanding of business processes, business administration, and business economics.  With that being said, in developing your business intelligence solution, you do not have to “start from scratch”, but instead base it on well-established open-source products and adapt it to your specific requirements by adding additional custom components, interfaces, and modules.  Cornerstones of the Development Process:   - Analysis of your company-specific informational requirements.   - Analysis of existing core-data (e.g. in ERP systems and MDM systems).  - Visualisation of processes using flow charts.   - Decision, whether classic met

  There are always medical breakthroughs on the horizon that will change the way diseases are treated. And while there always will be dramatic changes in medical treatments and technologies, there's a dramatic evolution in how the healthcare industry relates to its consumers. One area in healthcare that is changing, but will be even more striking in the near future, is relationship marketing.  As technologies related to the medicines and procedures themselves change, so must the marketing that supports them. Trends are emerging and show us the future of relationship marketing in healthcare. While some of these trends might not come to pass, we do know for sure that one trend will continue: Healthcare marketing must improve patient health. Consumers, physicians, payers, legislators, and the general public will reject anything else.  Healthcare Information 24/7 Consumers will demand immediate access to healthcare information. The information that consumers will have access to and wil

  The management of assets crosses the boundaries between the business and technical functions of an organization. Technical systems management is all about the care and ongoing serviceability of technical assets, whilst the business is more interested with keeping track of the assets that it has and the procedures surrounding their lifetime. The functions of managing an asset throughout its entire life are mostly linked with business requirements - ordering, purchasing, delivery, contracts, warranties, financing and other aspects.  However, a highly functional asset inventory is a useful by-product of any good quality systems management solution. Asset management tools have to bring these requirements together and bridge the gap between technical monitoring and financial management. Asset management is concerned, for the most part, with IT assets but it should not be constrained that way. There is absolutely no reason why the asset database should not contain details of mobile