The Lohnen Group
Varied experience drives success for The Lohnen Group’s clients
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n 2005, a friend who is CFO of a major manufacturer in the Greenville area asked Donna Rauch if she knew someone who could partner with her to develop a cost and pricing structure for a new product line. “The company was rapidly expanding and she had no time and her staff was busy on other projects,” explains Rauch, who was working at the time as an operations manager for an IT company. Armed with an extensive list of contacts, Rauch went over the list with her friend, explaining what each person could bring to the project and how to get it done. Before the meeting was over, her friend asked Rauch to come on board and tackle it herself. “I had to admit, I enjoyed engaging in business growth projects but was concerned that the projects would end and I would be out of work,” she says. She shouldn’t have worried. Six years later, Rauch is president and CEO of The Lohnen Group with a bustling office on Main Street in downtown Greenville. The Lohnen Group provides professional accounting and financial consulting services for all stages of a business, including early growth and expansion and diversification, for continued financial improvement. “We allow entrepreneurs to focus on the passion and vision that created their business by establishing and managing sound accounting and financial processes,” says Rauch. The Lohnen Group also partners with more mature companies to establish pricing and cost structures, define measurable performance accountabilities and analyze customer financial performance. Although The Lohnen Group partners with a CPA firm on some projects, Rauch says the core business is based on her and her staff ’s experience and perspective as controllers, financial managers and business owners. “Technical knowledge is certainly important, but our team has experience in those key positions when products ship out the door, when decisions are made regarding product
Donna Rauch, owner of The Lohnen Group. lines, manufacturing lines and investing in capital to move an operation, etc.,” she says. This experience allows The Lohnen Group to drive results. Rauch says their success is based on the ability to see financial management as more than just debits and credits or accounting for money after it has been earned. “We understand that the needs of an ‘up and coming’ company are different than one ‘on the move’ or ‘off and running.’ We understand them because we have held management positions in those companies. We’ve been in the trenches,” she says. 2011 will be a year of developing strategic partnerships, Rauch says. “The Lohnen Group plans to include an IT partnership and CPA firm partnership to better meet the needs of our clients.”
135 S. Main Street, Suite 100 | Greenville, SC 29607 www.thelohnengroup.com | 864-752-5926
Special Advertising Supplement | 2011 Profiles in Business
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