The Business Accelerator Project.

• Author: Lewis, Di

Business Accelerator Project

Apex Logistic Group Moves Forward

Utah Business premiered the Business Accelerator Project in early 2012 as a way to jumpstart businesses that were experiencing stagnant growth. We wanted to help participating companies reach greater success, while also allowing you to join their journey and apply some of the lessons learned directly in your business.

We started by gathering a team of business-building experts: Niel Nickolaisen, an experienced and innovative operations and IT leader; James Clarke, managing partner of Clarke Capital Partners and founder of CLEARLINK; Kent Thomas, CEO and founder of Advanced CFO Solutions; and Brad Jensen, COO of Griffin Hill.

Throughout the past year, this team of business-savvy pros has worked one-on-one with Apex Logistics Group, a full truckload logistics brokering company. The team started by helping Apex define its weaknesses, strengths and opportunities for growth, and then helped the company develop and implement a strategic plan to improve those areas of weakness and take advantage of its opportunities. After about a year of work, the company is already experiencing hard results. In the following pages, we provide an analysis of what Apex learned and implemented during the past year, and how the company has built a solid foundation to accelerate forward.

Crunching the Numbers

With Financial Data in Hand, Apex can Maximize Profits

If you want your business to make more money, you need to make more sales, right? Well, not necessarily. Not if the things you are selling have razor-thin profit margins or actually cost you money in the end.

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Over the course of the Business Accelerator project, Kent Thomas, CEO of Advanced CFO Solutions, helped the Apex Logistics team learn how to use financial data to gain a deeper understanding of how their business makes money.

"Ninety-five percent of all of our new clients, when we start working with them they have financial statements but they don't have any information about their business," says Thomas. "A set of financial statements, regardless of how timely and regardless how accurate, unless they contain operational data and strategic information about your business, aren't very helpful to running your business."

With that in mind, Thomas helped Apex transition from simple profit/loss financial statements to complex reports that reveal where the company makes the most money--and where it loses money. But the...