Blog
Talking About Financial Matters That Affect You and Your Organization
Why An All-in-one Provider Makes Sense
Sep 28th, 2018
One of the things I’m proudest of saying as the CEO of Selectpath is that at 51 employees, we are who our ideal customer is. When I started the company with my business partner, we had one employee and a single office with an external welcome area. We’ve gone through dramatic growth—from a very small boutique firm to an organization that deals with Fortune 500 companies.
All of the challenges, opportunities and issues that our clients deal with, we know intimately. We completely understand the lifecycle of a business. We have done succession of partners in the firm, transitioned ownership, completed mergers and acquisitions, and roll-outs of divisions of businesses.
When we look at each client’s situation we are able to put ourselves in their shoes and speak from experience about how to best guide, advise and coach clients to reach their goals. An important part of that includes understanding the dangers in their path.
I know the mistakes. I’ve made lots of the mistakes. I have clients who have made a number of missteps and we learn from them. By sharing learnings and coaching clients through challenges, and towards their goals, we can potentially avoid the risk of repeating those mistakes.
Maybe you are failing to save enough for retirement, and at age 70 and you still have to work because you can’t afford to retire. Maybe you as an employer are failing to deliver a compensation package that meets the needs of your key people and you have a problem with retention. Maybe you can’t attract the right people or you failed to have the policy or processes in place, and you end up creating legal issues for you and your workforce that end up directly impacting your productivity.
Our failures, or lack of successes, creates opportunities. You have to be able to take advantage of them, and we have and continue to do so. Part of that includes realizing that your needs are multi-faceted and affect multiple aspects of your life and business.
At Selectpath we have created Guiding Professional Solutions, spanning benefits and pensions, financial planning, human resources management as well as HRIS and payroll.
The concept started about seven years ago when we saw elements of what large organizations were able to accomplish from tools combined with unique advice and knowledge capabilities. But we saw that its packaging didn’t work for the small to medium entrepreneurial employer. The time and the costs were tremendously prohibitive and required an element of scale that most clients could not afford, nor were interested in investing in.
By creating our collection of best-in-class advisors with technology, we deliver a cohesive, holistic solution for company needs as they evolve and as situations change.
For example, an individual with a start-up likely knows their core business very well, but may not know anything about employment law, hiring, onboarding, compensation, payroll, compliance—the list goes on.
The typical CEO or business owner has to wear a lot of hats. They are expected to understand, determine and deploy information beyond what their core intellectual property might be—whether they’re a service business or a manufacturer. They may not know about risk management as it relates to their role in the value of the business. They may not understand the tax implication of the type of organization they establish (and as they grow, the impact of an incorrect structure).
Part of the problem they face is limited internal resources to delegate decision making to, or limited budget to establish an infrastructure that allows the businesses owners to work less in the business than on the business.
Our organization can help business owners through that process, not only because we have capable individuals who are knowledgeable in those areas, but because we’ve been with clients through that full lifecycle. We have a depth of experience that strengthens our clients’ success, and in essence, helps people learn from other’s mistakes to avoid and reduce missteps.
We have helped clients grow from plastic patio furniture in one office space to hundreds of employees, going public and potentially becoming acquired. We see a tremendous amount of change, adjustment, uncertainty that then culminates into significant amounts of wealth and other complexities as these clients go through their lifecycle. We are built to deliver what they need, when they need it, in a cohesive strategy and on a scalable basis.
Business owners can deal with many separate service providers and technology platforms like a personal financial planner, a benefits consultant, a pensions consultant, a different HR advisor, a benefits admin system, an HRIS system, a payroll system, and attendance system. That’s all friction for time and headspace of the small to medium entrepreneurial business person and they are competing interests for money and time. By bringing them under one umbrella it creates a cohesive solution. All of the aspects of your business then play in the sandbox together to try and deliver results, rather than competing against one another for share of wallet and headspace.
If there is one thing that makes sense to me, it is all-in-one business solutions—simply, because you can spend more time driving value into your business and less time worrying about the risks of operating your business.