Wednesday 3 November 2010

Buff up your Business

The next strategy in the "Buff Up Your Business" series is:

Strategy 4 - Get all the Information you need to Run your Business Successfully.

"When you can measure what you are speaking about,
and express it in numbers,
you know something about it;
but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot express it in numbers,
your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."

Lord Kelvin 1883


From a Financial perspective you should have regular reports on:

  • Your sales;
  • cost of sales;
  • general and admin expenses;
  • operating and net profits;
  • accounts receiveable and accounts payable

You should be able to see at a glance what your sales are for the current month compared to last year. Do you need to do something extra right now, or are you matching or exceeding the figures?

Have you researched all avenues to ensure your admin expenses are being kept down?

On the operational side you need reports on:

  • Production rates;
  • customer count;
  • staff count/turnover
  • customer satisfaction ratings;
  • employee satisfaction ratings;
  • project status.

Do you know what your employee satisfaction ratings are?
Do you ever do a staff satisfaction survey?
Or have discussions about how things could be improved?
Do you ask for their ideas?
Remember happy staff are productive staff!

If you find the thought of all this a bit daunting and feel that it would be easier to plan it out with somebody then I would love to hear from you. Get in touch with me at Nicholl Consultancy.

Until next time, have a productive week.

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