Case: After 10 years of development, Company A has developed into a group enterprise with 4 or 5 business segments. Due to its good business performance, the company has a listing plan and started to contact with securities institutions. After the listing counseling began, everything seemed to go smoothly, but soon the top management of Company A found many serious problems:
The company has no clear headquarters in equity, and the equity structure of each subsidiary is not clear.
The company completed the share reform two years ago, and more than 20 old employees became shareholders. At present, these people are not performing well. After the share reform, talents have grown, and talents have been introduced from outside. How to motivate them?
The company is going to introduce strategic investors, and the entry price may be as high as 20 yuan/share, which is likely to greatly increase the profit expectation of shareholders.
The company's performance appraisal has been done all the time, and there are also salary management norms, but it always feels difficult to adapt to the company's development. It wants to cover more employees with equity incentives, but brokers say it is not suitable after entering the counseling period.
It can be seen that the biggest confusion of Company A lies in talent motivation. It stands to reason that the company has a good development prospect, and there should be many ways to motivate talents. However, because it is in the "listing" stage, which is a special stage of enterprise development, it will face many constraints in all aspects because of its docking with the capital market. Let's take a look at why listing is a special stage of enterprise development, and what are the characteristics of enterprises at this stage?
First, divide the stages according to maturity.
When it comes to the stage of enterprise development, it is generally called enterprise life cycle. The theory divides the development of enterprises into four stages: initial stage, development stage, maturity stage and decline stage, and there are many complicated extended versions, which are divided according to the maturity of enterprises. Here, add "expansion" between development and maturity (see the blue part below) to distinguish the maturity of the enterprise in more detail:
Start-up period: the business has not solved the survival problem and is unable to improve management norms.
Development: the business tends to be stable, and the management complexity increases with the increase of business and personnel scale.
Growth: Breakthrough development of business, often accompanied by diversification, management norms began to precipitate.
Maturity: business tends to be stable again, management and personnel are aging, and enterprises need to make further breakthroughs.
It can be seen that this division is not simply based on business scale, profitability or business maturity, but includes business, management, team and many other aspects. In short, it depends on both business maturity and management maturity, or the matching degree between management and business.
It should be noted that many enterprises are used to dividing maturity by actual operation time, but the development speed of different enterprises varies greatly. Some enterprises develop slowly, and may not reach the growth stage after 10 years. Some enterprises have developed at a high speed and entered the growth period in just a few years. It is precisely because of the difference in business time and maturity that enterprises often misjudge their own maturity, which leads to great deviation in understanding.
Secondly, divide the stages according to the business diversity.
Many enterprises will gradually develop a number of businesses in the development process, that is, business diversification. When multiple business segments operate relatively independently, the enterprise will be transformed from a single company to a group enterprise (see the yellow part of the above figure). It should be noted that the organizational form of business segments can be companies, business divisions or even sales departments. As long as the business segment is regarded as an independent business unit in internal management and there is more than one such business unit in the enterprise, it can be considered that the enterprise has become a group enterprise.
The change of collectivization is not only the increase of the number of business divisions, but also the change of the relationship between headquarters and business divisions. So what is the headquarters? Headquarters is a collection of functions that can be enjoyed by multiple business units, including both functional departments and business departments used by business units. The "headquarters" of a single company is not prominent, because it only serves one business department, and any problems can be solved internally. For group enterprises, because there are many business units, it is necessary to clarify the position of the headquarters and separate it from the original core business units, and the business units, no matter how important, are only business units controlled by the headquarters.
It is precisely because of the separation of their respective positions that we need to strengthen the concept of "organizational level" (note that it is not "administrative level"). The goal of the division is the development of its own business sector, and the goal of the headquarters is the development of the whole group. This separation of goals changes rights and responsibilities, evaluation and incentives.
Many diversified enterprises in China just hang up a "group" in name, each business department is in a loose state, there is no strong headquarters, there is also a lack of linkage between business departments, and there is also a lack of clear hierarchy in equity relations. For this kind of enterprise, we suggest that it should be dispersed into a single company first, then transformed into a group, and then managed centrally in the form of a group enterprise.
Can also be phased according to the listing process.
In order to achieve greater development, enterprises can rely on the power of capital, so some enterprises go to IPO in the securities market and become listed companies that issue shares to the securities market. The transition stage from unlisted companies to listed companies is called "quasi-listing stage" (see the red part of the above picture). Although the enterprises at this stage have not been listed, they have many characteristics different from those of ordinary unlisted companies.
Simply put, non-listed companies hardly deal with the securities market. Even if venture capital and PE are introduced for equity financing, the company's equity cannot be publicly traded, and it can only be transferred in the OTC market such as the New Third Board or traded in a small range. Listed companies need to be bound by the CSRC. While benefiting from the securities market, they should also fulfill their responsibilities as public companies, and they will be "involuntarily" in many aspects. Companies that want to go public need to carry out reforms in assets, finance and taxation, equity, corporate governance and so on because they want to go public. A lot of self-discipline is needed to make an IPO successful.
In the stage of listing, enterprises need to revise many previous practices, do a lot of preparatory work for IPO, and consider the needs after listing. To sum up, first, to develop, any adjustment can not affect the performance standards; Second, it must comply with the regulations of the CSRC, even more stringent; Third, we must advance. Once you enter the counseling program and officially go public, you can't do a lot of work, so you need to do it well in advance before counseling.
Comprehensive analysis of enterprise development stage
After understanding the three division methods of enterprise development stages respectively, we should feel that these three divisions are not completely separated, but interrelated. For example, companies to be listed are often in the growth stage, and many of them are already group enterprises. Comprehensive analysis of the three divisions shows that there are four important time nodes (see the green part of the above figure):
Node 1: Although the single company is still in the development stage, it has begun to diversify. Because the internal management is not mature enough, multi-business parallelism will bring great challenges to management; Because there is little difference between merchants, it is conducive to the balance between merchants. If we first enter the growth period and then operate in groups, there will be a big gap between the old and new businesses, and it is often difficult to balance the business development.
Node 2: Enterprises have entered the growth period, and their scale and profitability have been greatly improved, so they can go further on the road of collectivization and have stronger listing expectations. It can be seen from this node that business development is the source power to promote organizational evolution and capital operation, not the other way around.
Node 3: To go public, there is no definite time node, which refers to a period of time, from the beginning of the company's clear listing plan to the intensive preparation. Enterprises entering the listing stage should consider more compliance, and the requirement of compliance priority will even have an impact on their business. The most typical impact is the decline in profits, and it will also have an impact on the organizational structure because of asset restructuring.
Node 4: Enterprises have higher compliance requirements after listing, and we should also pay attention to the influence between enterprise development and stock price. After raising funds from the public, they should also consider the issue of control. If the equity is dispersed, the influence of corporate governance on enterprise decision-making should also be paid enough attention. Many listed companies have entered the mature stage prematurely because of their stable business, exposing a series of organizational problems.
It can be seen that when analyzing the development stage of enterprises, we should comprehensively use the above three division methods and focus on four key nodes, so as to locate enterprises more accurately and implement more targeted management changes.
Listing is a special stage of enterprise development.
By analyzing the four key nodes of enterprise development, we can find that the planned listing is a very important stage, because the enterprises at this stage have three characteristics:
Features 1: fund traction.
Except for emerging enterprises promoted by venture capital, most enterprises do not have much intersection with capital. Enterprises have always relied on business traction to achieve development, and often encounter great bottlenecks in the growth period. In the business traction period, all enterprises are based on business development, and the planning is also business planning. Generally speaking, enterprises can develop at their own pace. When entering the listing stage, enterprises will begin to pay attention to capital operation, consider the requirements from the perspective of capital, and even give priority to the provisions of IPO.
To this end, enterprises will pay more attention to profits, improve business quality, optimize customer structure and strengthen expense management. The goal is to reduce compliance risks. In order to achieve better performance, we must pay more attention to talent incentive, and with the help of capital, talent incentive will be stronger. These are all changes brought about by capital traction.
Feature 2: History is the best.
Enterprises entering the listing stage are often just entering the growth stage or just realizing the transformation of the group. Whether it is financial strength or enterprise scale, it is the best period since the establishment of the enterprise. Just as a person will get carried away when he is in high spirits, so will enterprises. In the rapid development, it is inevitable that there will be some rashness and rashness, and a lot of superficial articles will be made.
In particular, it is good to see that enterprises have the hope of listing, but at the same time it will also have a negative impact on their mentality. For example, the performance index is high, it is difficult to achieve, and finally the harvest begins. The listing of enterprises is not effective, and the pressure on all sides increases. If it is not controlled, history is most likely to become less beautiful.
Feature 3: Very changeable.
Whether the listed company can finally succeed in IPO has great variables. When almost everyone bets on listing, expectations will be raised too high. Once the final listing fails, the negative impact can be imagined. Therefore, we should correctly guide enterprises, do not take listing as the only goal of enterprise development, and do not let the preparation for listing disrupt normal enterprise development.
Even if the final listing is successful, the enterprise will continue to develop and have the next goal. Many listed companies lack the will and ability of capital operation, and will find that listing has not brought much change. Business should be down-to-earth, and talents should be cultivated slowly. This psychological gap will also have a great impact on enterprises.
Therefore, whether the listing is successful or not, it will bring possible negative effects to enterprises. Enterprises need to face up to the listing, always take the development of enterprises as the main line, and capital is only auxiliary. If this can be done, variables will become the norm.