We have some exciting news for Value Scout users! Over the past few months, we’ve been working on some impactful improvements for both advisors and business owners. Whether you’re using the platform to model your exit or to build long-term value for your enterprise—this month’s feature release has something for everyone.
Feature Overview:
- Equity and Enterprise Value Toggle for CMV
- Planning Upgrades & Related Dashboard Cards
- Business Owner Features: Exported Reports
- Advisor Features: Exported Reports & Lead Generation
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Equity and Enterprise Value Toggle for CMV
There are many different reasons behind an owner or founder’s desire to understand more about their business value. Maybe they have a buyer for a controlling interest in the company, or maybe they’re planning a long-term succession plan for a family member. As a result of these differing motivations, we have introduced Enterprise and Equity Value toggle on the company dashboard.
On your dashboard, you can now switch between these values on the Current Market Value (CMV) card by clicking the ellipses. The title will either show CMVEQ (Equity Value) or CMVEV (Enterprise Value) to indicate which is being shown. Additionally, you can set a specific CMV type to always be shown and the other hidden in your profile settings. We have also updated the value chart in EM to reflect either Equity or Enterprise value for historical years. Debt is not considered for future projected years as Value Scout cannot predict the company’s level of future debt.
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Planning Upgrades
If you use the Value Scout planning toolset to plan out your long and short-term value creation strategies, you’ll be excited to know that you can now track the status of findings, link annual objectives to quarterly initiatives, and track value to all your to-dos without double-counting.
Track the Status of Your Findings
There is now a status field in the details of each finding and a filter for completion. Users are now able to easily view the status of findings, including any that are incomplete for future plans. Additionally, Value Scout will remind you to update the status of your related finding as you update the status of your related plan item.
Link Your Objectives and Initiatives
It is now possible to link multiple quarterly initiatives to an annual objective or define a related objective for initiatives. As always, the ability to attach an estimated value impact to an initiative or objective is unlocked after your value assessment and financial questions have been submitted.
Now that you can link initiatives and objectives, there is some new logic that is applied. The estimated value impact of related initiatives should be equal to the estimated value impact of the parent objective. To easily keep track, we have introduced a new field in objective details called “Unidentified Value.” This field displays any discrepancy between the target value impact for the objective and the sum of the estimated value impact of all related initiatives. Best practice is for the unidentified value to equal $0. This would indicate you have sufficiently planned granular visible tasks (initiatives) to reach your large goal (objective) and appropriately allocated and estimated value creation.
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New Dashboard Cards
Alongside this upgrade to plans, we have also implemented three new dashboard cards to help get visibility on the value gaps within plans.
- The Total Fiscal Year Estimated Value Impact card shows the total planned value impact for the fiscal year.
- The Unrepresented Annual Objective Value Impact card shows the sum of the target value impact listed in the annual plan that has not been connected to a quarterly initiative.
- The Fiscal Year Estimated Value Gap card shows the difference between the value creation needed to reach the Company’s target value for next year and the Company’s planned estimated value impact for the year.
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Business Owner Features:
Business Owners using Value Scout with or without an advisor now have the ability to export pdf reports.
- Value Planning Report: Learn which planning items are actually driving value for your enterprise, in addition to insights on your team’s performance against value metrics during a given period.
- Value Assessment Report: Export a snapshot view of your Value Assessment to easily review and complete answers with the relevant team members.
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Advisor Features:
Advisors on the platform now have the ability to export pdf reports for their clients. The first two reports are much like the business owner reports listed above but can be utilized differently in an advisor/client relationship. The third report is a much-requested lead-gen tool.
- Planning Report: Gain insight into clients’ long-term and short-term value gains and make it easier to jump into meaningful conversations about value planning with their clients.
- Assessment Report: Easily review your clients’ answers to the value assessment (or review the questions in detail with your client) to help form the backbone of the “story” behind the company’s value—great for kickoff meetings to get the ball rolling.
- Value Creation Playbook: The Value Creation Playbook (“VCP”) is a great new lead gen tool for advisors. The goal of the VCP is to help you identify clients that will be a good fit for you to onboard with the Value Scout platform and give your current clients an idea of how Value Scout could help them, with no strings attached.
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Summing Up:
At Value Scout, we’re continually striving to produce the best possible product for our intrepid users. This means a lot of listening and learning to produce a design and perfect a toolset that is an integral part of your workflow, whether you’re a value creation advisor or a business owner who wants to grow their enterprise value.
Questions about the new features? Check out our helpdesk collection for step-by-step instructions or contact support.
