Services

Operational and Financial Consulting

ESBA provides a variety of operational and financial consulting services for clients actively involved in a turnaround, bank workout, or crisis situation. In addition, we provide general business advisory services to simply tighten up an operation. The following are some of the specific types of projects in which we work:

Crisis Management, Bank Workouts, and Turnaround Consulting

• Crisis assessment and consulting
• Business viability assessment and solvency analysis
• Turnaround strategy development and execution
• Cash flow and loan availability control
• Balance sheet restructuring
• Interim executive management; e.g. CEO, COO, CFO, CRO, any VP position.
• Lender and inter-creditor relationship management
• Trade vendor management
  
• Collateral assessment and management

For those situations where the operational and/or financial challenges are particularly daunting–and cash is extremely tight–the current management of a company may not be capable of independently dealing with the situation. It may be that a key executive is no longer at the company, or that the management that grew the business and ran it on a “business as usual” basis is not equipped to deal with the challenges of a crisis situation. These are the types of situations in which ESBA can step in as a “Crisis Manager” and assume control of some or all of the day-to-day management functions for a period of time. In assuming such a role, ESBA has been able to get control of the challenges and restore the credibility of the organization in the eyes of its key constituents.

Business Advisory Services

• Operations assessment, planning, budgeting, management and improvement
• Organizational restructuring
• Sales, marketing and merchandising effectiveness
• New product introductions
• Gross margin improvement and cost control work
• A/R, inventory and liquidity improvement
• Financial administrative and reporting productivity
• Asset sales
  
• Internal control assessments
• Accounting system upgrades

Due Diligence Services—Potential or Existing Providers of Financing

• Pre-commitment business plan evaluations and solvency analyses
• Quality of earning assessments
• Management evaluations

In all of our Operational and Financial Consulting engagements, we adhere to some key principles, including the following:

• Knowing when to focus on one aspect of a business or the entire business;
• Providing insights that are at the appropriate “management level” but provide enough detail to support implementation;
• Prioritizing our recommendations;
• Working alongside client personnel, as appropriate, to control professional fees and provide for long-term implementation success; and
• Communicating responsibly with outside parties, including financing sources.