I’ve had clients on opposite ends of the spectrum and I’ve always found this quote to be true. The ones who would manage every process, from where their customers came from to how many people used their offer, were able to set goals and achieve those goals – so that they could set more goals. Those who couldn’t manage it, couldn’t improve. Where do you start when there’s no focus?
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” – Peter Drucker
If you’re not sure where to begin – start big and go small.
If you could improve one thing in your business, what would it be?
Traffic? Conversions? Return customers?
Once you’ve decided what you want to improve on, you can start developing the tactics to do so. Determining what exactly you need to measure, based on what will drive your company’s success, is just as important as the actual act of measuring. If you are not measuring relevant, meaningful information you might as well not measure anything at all. In today’s world, big data can be seen as the new competitive advantage. Sophisticated analytics, dashboards and key performance indicators (KPIs) are substantially improving the way people run their business. Analyzing data can improve your decision making, minimize risk and uncover insights that you may have never realized about your company and its operations. Data can also be used to innovate your products and services. If you had the ability to test all of your decisions, how would it affect the way you compete? The possibilities are endless as big data continues to develop. And it can be done by simply making the commitment and setting aside the time to manage the information. Once you have determined what you are measuring, your KPIs, the rest becomes routine. Set clearly defined goals and deadlines to make and evaluate those goals. I recommend yearly goals, broken down into monthly goals. These monthly goals should be tracked on a well-organized dashboard that you can review with management each month to determine what went wrong and what can be improved upon. Ask yourself and your colleagues – • Which goals didn’t we meet? • Why? • Were our goals unrealistic? • Could we raise our goals and still meet them? • Once you have analyzed the data you can make the necessary adjustments for the following month. It will be near impossible to not see improvement. Once you’ve improved in that area, what’s the next thing you want to improve on? Eventually you will start to see that every element of your business can be improved once you have a goal in mind and a path on which you want to get there. You can’t always be perfect, but you can always be better. Like I always say, you have to KNOW your numbers to GROW your numbers! Not sure where to begin? Let All Systems Growevaluate your business strategy and help you take your goals to the next level.
