Over 20 members gathered for The Unified Group’s 2018 Financial Forum held September 16th – 18th in Rosemont, IL.  

Guests Shane & Melissa Dick (Atlas Accounting & Consulting) kicked off day one presenting the history and overview of The Unified Group’s financial benchmark.  Attendees learned how to utilize the template that captures three year trends.  Michael Flesher (Arctic Air) shared the history and use of the Z score, which is an algorithm that was developed for detecting a company’s profitability and chance of bankruptcy.

Huckestein Mechanical Services has found great value in utilizing visual financial analytics.  Jonathan Staso (Huckestein Mechanical) introduced James Julius (Visimo) to discuss how data analytics could improve financial performance, increase productivity and create predictable outcomes for the members.  Sean Fox (Schooley Mitchell) informed the group on how using a telecom consulting company could reduce their telecom expenses by an average of 28%.  They are also the point of contact for all phone service within the organization so it takes the phone management piece out of the members’ hands.  Since working with Sean, Unified Group members have saved over $950,000 utilizing this service.  

Melissa Dick facilitated the cash flow segment which also included member sharing.  Ann Cook (MSS) demonstrated the Cash Forecast spreadsheet they use and Patrick Meier (Midstate Energy) walked the group through their Forecasting Tool.   Shane Dick (Atlas Accounting & Consulting) implemented shared software that will create a profit projection model to determine what cash flow looks like testing assumptions.  

Stacy Shiflet (Blauch Brothers) gave a thorough presentation on Fraud; things to look out for, covering examples of how fraud can hit close to home with theft of labor time, tools and equipment,  etc.  The day finished off with Mignonne Steen (CMC Corporate Solutions) explaining their 9/80 work schedule that allows technicians to be off every other Friday to minimize the overall overtime component and Scott Krum (Legacy Mechanical) showed his weekly labor report and shared how it is working to keep jobs on schedule.  

On day two, Tim Smerz (Air Comfort) gave an overview of Captive Insurance and the benefits of long- term savings and premium reimbursement for safe years with low claims.  Melissa Dick facilitated the discussion on scorecards and weekly dashboards members are using to measure many different KPI’s such as net income, backlog and A/R.  Stacy Shiflet (Blauch Brothers) shared information on their productivity software from DBrown Management which includes workflow mapping for major processes and their newly implemented gain sharing program, which is a bottom-up bonus plan structured to share compensation for hard work with those that performed the work.  We finished the forum with Michael Flesher (Arctic Air) giving a detailed explanation of cost per hour of service which showed how to incorporate auto expenses, advertising, and office supplies into the equation.

This was an incredible group and many ideas and best practices were shared throughout the one and a half day meeting.  “The best part was meeting other professionals that share many of my same financial concerns and learning how others address similar issues.”  Kevin O’Connor (Air Comfort)

Special thanks to our task force who created the agenda for this action-packed session; Jonathan Staso (Huckestein Mechanical), Michael Flesher (Arctic Air), and Stacy Shiflet (Blauch Brothers).