Today was a very operational and admin day (again!). No real work in terms of huge strategic value, but a lot of operational things. In fact, the big part of the day was spent on looking and approving invoices – from the organizational point of view, this is definitely a choke point. Approvals, cash releases are centralized in one office – and that office slows things down. so, as I had promised myself earlier, no change for a month, and now it is close to month and I’m getting a very good feeling for what needs to be done.
In terms of specifics, I think 1 solid day on thinking through the whole finance, budget, approval, controls, safety, fraud process would give me a pretty decent framework. But, then again, I have Scott flying in on Monday, and I’m going to look to him to help me not only setup the basic accounting stuff, but also to setup a higher level control system in place to decentralize power from the ‘finance’ office.
HK boys have come back with new Asian structure – they are a bit on the high side for pricing – but there is value there – so will need to work with them a bit to make the pricing a bit easier to swallow – but overall I feel the value is there – so not there to squeeze them out and go for bargain basement pricing – but rather something that makes sense.
Schedules a call with US CPA to look at the US side of the structure. Its taking a while, but finally coming together. So, all together it looks like I will end up opening up 7 or 8 new companies, so I need to allocate my time accordingly in the upcoming months.