Banknotes

While the number of checks used to pay for personal or business expenses continues to go down every year, paper checks are still the most popular method of payment for business transactions in the United States.

Regardless of business type, healthy, growing relationships are vital to your business’s long-term success. Healthy relationships enhance client retention while strengthening opportunities for relationship expansion and new client acquisition.

Does it feel like just yesterday that you launched your business? Like many entrepreneurs, you probably started with little more than energy, confidence, and a clever idea.

University business school graduates have a great deal to offer in the modern economic landscape. In addition to core financial knowledge of accounting, finance, and information technology, they've learned strategic thinking, effective communication, and organizational behavior. They've gained exposure to diverse perspectives through collaboration with peers from varied backgrounds, and explored issues with a global perspective.

Most people have heard of Pareto’s 80-20 principle on cause and effect, which theorizes that 20% of individual actions are often responsible for 80% of total results. This rule is useful in explaining outcomes in business relationships, economic events, and even social situations.

Twenty years ago, I left my position at a large New York financial institution to move to a bank in the Midwest. Shortly thereafter, 9/11 happened.

I remember a colleague who was still in New York running operations at another large financial institution at the time telling me they were able to get their international banking operations back up and running in very short order. He confided that it had been difficult to convince people at his bank to run practice drills of their crisis plan leading up to that event. But because of their meticulous preparation, each manager understood his or her critical role in identifying what needed to happen and executing the plan quickly and confidently.

Many individuals and businesses in southern Wisconsin have seen delayed U.S. Postal Service mail deliveries since the closure of Madison's USPS processing and distribution center in 2014. This resulted in mail being routed to Milwaukee for sorting, even when the sender and recipient were local. While mail has never been fast – it's called "snail mail for a reason" – the gap in speed between postal mail and electronic communications widened more.

Conventional wisdom among grief counselors holds that going through hard times does not create problems in a relationship. It amplifies them.

Every craftsman knows there are multitudes of ways to construct a beautiful piece of furniture – and as many considerations to make in so doing. The same holds true for commercial financing: there are plenty of different means of achieving the same outcome; the challenge often lies in determining the best one for each individual client.

While a disruption in cash flow can happen for many reasons in the best of times, the economic consequences of this coronavirus pandemic have certainly proven that life is not “business as usual” for almost everyone all at the same time.