For Privately Held Companies and Family Owned Businesses it can be a real challenge to find information about comparable firms of the same industry to benchmark against. Larger publicly traded companies are often only a poor substitute. Owners and managers of privately held businesses can quickly assess their company and obtain a snapshot of where they stand compared to the competition by using FINTEL's tools.

With our FINTEL Industry Metrics reports (FIM) or FINTEL Business Scorecard or our interactive FINTEL Business Analyzer tool, owners and managers of privately-held businesses will be able to achieve their goals.

• Use a very effective system to help evaluate the current state of the business
• Always know how the company stands on financial key indicators compared to competitors in your industry based upon performance benchmarks that are difficult to dispute
• Compare the business against reliable benchmarks from privately held companies of over 2,500 industry groups that are not available anywhere else and that will demonstrate the current performance of your business
• Convince bankers and insurance agents with arguments using a language that they can understand – numbers
• Define strategies backed by financial and industry analysis from your own specific industry
• Receive actionable recommendations based on the analytical expertise derived from years of experience and proven successful in many similar cases
• Present results in a very professional manner without additional effort

FINTEL's products are ideal for evaluating the financial performance of a business and recommending options for improvement.

Select a particular product to view more detailed information.

• FINTEL Industry Metrics reports (FIM)
• • Industry financial intelligence covering over 2,500 industry groups and 900,000 privately held businesses
  • Industry size breakdown into small, medium-sized and large segments specific to each industry, rather than using fixed size thresholds
  • 17 commonly used key financial ratios for each industry
  • MORE…
• FINTEL Business Scorecard (FBS)
• • Concise and easy to understand snapshot of financial health of a business
  • Industry financial benchmarks comparable to the business under analysis (9 ratios)
  • Practical suggestions for improving financial performance
  • MORE…
• FINTEL Business Analyzer (FBA) Pro
• • Easy to understand insights about the financial performance of a business. Analysis of:
  • • Revenues, gross margin and operating expenses
    • Earnings power and profitability
    • Cash liquidity position and working capital
    • Ability to grow
    • Fair market value
    • Ability to meet loan payment obligations
  • Comprehensive industry financial benchmarks comparable to the business under analysis
  • Practical suggestions for improving financial performance
  • MORE…

FINTEL also provides different training options for owners and managers of privately held firms with steep learning curves to enable them to use our tools quickly and efficiently in their business.

PRODUCT USED

Fintel Business Analyzer distributed by pro|business coaches of Des Moines, Iowa.

CLIENT PROFILE

SuperFlow Technologies Group combines SuperFlow Corporation and Hicklin Engineering, L.C. — two industry leaders who provide the most complete selection of dynamometers and test equipment for the entire drivetrain. SuperFlow equipment is used to test or rebuild every component of the drivetrain from the engine and transmission, to the torque converter, axles, drive shaft and brakes.

BUSINESS NEED

SuperFlow CFO and CPA Bill Pearce was requested to present a profound financial overview to the organization's Board of Directors to assist them in building a better organizational strategy. In order to accomplish this Bill anticipated a 50 hour effort to fully document past, present, and future probabilities and possibilities using standard financial statements and custom developed reports for this $20 million dollar manufacturer. Even with all this work there was no guarantee of a meaningful standard by which financial ratios could be judged as good or poor.

How would Bill help determine competitiveness, determine inventory level appropriateness, assess business value, or the impact of cash flow to lending needs, or whether the company's investments to date were producing as well as they ought. Even for a professional financial officer like Bill these were daunting tasks and represented many, many hours of work!

SOLUTION AND BENEFITS

Bill Pearce then learned from pro|business coaches about Fintel Business Analyzer. pro|business coaches spoke about the insight that can be gained from applying the powerful analytics and benchmarking features of Fintel Business Analyzer. Intrigued, Bill accepted a call from Fintel, LLC's Phil Aucutt, VP of Business Development. Phil provided an hour's worth of training on the functionality and use of the tool.

Bill purchased the tool and entered SuperFlow Technologies Group's past 3 years of financials into the simple forms provided on-line within the Fintel Business Analyzer product. This immediately produced extra-ordinary amounts of comparative data against the other manufacturers within the same NAICS (North American Industrial Classification System) code. Now armed with both benchmarking data, financial ratios, and comparative spreads Bill could also create "what if" scenarios and projections within Fintel Business Analyzer, for the board in the areas of Liquidity, Profitability, Strategic Growth, and Business Valuation.

QUOTE

"The board and management were more than impressed with the data! I can't over state the value of my taking that call from pro|business coaches. It turned out that Fintel 2.0 provided the most highly competitive and strategic information SuperFlow has ever had. The board and management decisions coming out of that session were tremendously well informed! I felt like a hero."

"I was looking for a simple way to understand the financials in my business and how I compare to others. I found FINTEL and did not need to look any longer."

Jack Wiley (Business Owner)

"I paid my accountant $2,500 for similar information that was junk compared to this."

Steve Springer (Business Owner)

"We spent a lot of time and money valuing our business to find out that with the FINTEL valuation we would have ended up with roughly the same result at a fraction of the effort."

Harry Kaufmann (Business Owner)

"I am not really an expert in finance and have never used these types of tools before but with FINTEL I found one that I can understand and that even shows me how I get better and improve my business."

Keith Stover (Business Owner)

"I am convinced that using FINTEL to monitor my financials has given me a performance edge over the competition."

Steven Harlow (Business Owner)

"I am not a numbers guy but when my banker came with the scorecard and pointed to the financial difficulties and what I needed to do to improve, I followed his advice and today I have a profitable business and a much better life."

Michael Kovac (Business Owner)

"I had never looked at benchmarking until I discovered FINTEL. Now I would not want to run my business without it. It showed me a roadmap to boost profits."

Scott Derksen (Business Owner)

"This will become part of our business plan, it just saved me weeks of work!"

Rick Haig (Business Owner)

"FINTEL helped me to unleash the incredible power of benchmarking and boost my profits."

Matthew Downey (Business owner)

"If you want to assure success, I recommend you use FINTEL. This is what I did and I have to say it paid off handsomely."

Harvey Gerhardt (Business Owner)

"We regularly check the reports of this unique tool and always find some ideas to make more money or become more efficient."

Debra Schneider (Finance Manager)

"I read about the scorecard and wanted to try it. It really showed me where the pain points are in my business. Since then, I have fixed those with some outside help."

Sara Rutman (Business Owner)

"I was wondering how other companies do in our business and never could get any information. Then, a business partner suggested FINTEL and I tried it. It was very easy to use and I've got some great ideas in what I to do to be among the best in our field."

Eric Jenkins (Business Owner)

"Benchmarking helps you compare your business to other businesses that are similar to yours and can highlight areas where you excel or need improvement. The business information specialists at the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the nation's most comprehensive business libraries, have named the five sites below (including the FINTEL Business Scorecard) as the best online resources for benchmarking your business. To find more free business research tools, visit biztoolkit.org."

Entrepreneurship Magazine