Simply put, running a business is a lot like driving a car!
And running a business without the proper tools and insight is like driving a car without a destination and without a route to follow. If you decide to take a cross country road trip, wouldn’t you decide where you were going, what roads you plan to take, and how much time you would allow to reach your destination? In addition, wouldn’t you have alternate routes identified in case one of your selected roads was closed?
Your business deserves the same kind of attention to business insight.
It is common to look in the rear-view mirror to see where you’ve been, but in business past performance is only one measurement of where you’d like to go. Once you have determined your destination, you must evaluate the various routes to achieve your goals. The strategic roadmap might include product mix, pricing strategies,
Your strategy should start with the factual data and your goals (destination) and you should calculate the routes available to you. Then, you need to evaluate the routes and determine if they are achievable. If not, then perhaps your goals are unrealistic. This is similar to a road closure. So it is critical to have a backup plan and other alternatives.
As with your road trip, you must constantly re-evaluate your assumptions, routes, and destination. Similarly, with your business plan, you should create it, use it and revise it many times as you embark on your trip to success.
So I ask, how do you drive your business forward?
The answer to this requires a holistic approach that’s more advanced than your vanilla business intelligence. It requires having access to the right information, the ability to share it in the right format, and being able to focus on not just general financial numbers, but also on KPI’s and tracking them throughout the different business areas. This type and depth of information enables companies to exploit their areas of strength and shore up the areas where they are not as strong.
Taking a holistic approach requires having the right tools in place and maximizing their benefits; being able to look at the business and data backwards and forwards.
This leads us to the beginning of our series called "SMART: A Holistic Approach to Business Insight" which will walk you through this approach in making fact-based decisions for your organization along with the one key requirement for success: utilizing this comprehensive model of
Do you run a SMART organization?
• S – Structure (Sound Data Structure)
• M – Modify (and Optimize
• A – Analyze (Analytical Tools)
• R – Reach Decision
• T – Track (and Measure)
Be sure to follow our series as we uncover the details, new trends and best practices associated with a SMART organization. We will also visit a recurring theme of how to "Work Smarter, Not Harder" and discuss how one of Finance's and Technology's hottest topics "The Cloud" helps achieve that.
Co-authored by Ron Ybarra, Partner at B2B
Ron Ybarra joined B2B CFO® as a Partner with a goal of helping clients increasing their cash position and profitability. Ron Ybarra optimizes a company’s ability to grow, get cash, and develop