KPIs: What are they, and which ones count?
Is your business feeling a little stagnant? Have you taken a deep dive into your KPIs?
Tim Bradshaw, Director of 415 Access—the firm’s new division that provides the full complement of bookkeeping services along with controller- and CFO-level services—explains the importance of KPIs in helping businesses grow.
When working with small businesses, I love helping them formulate a good, solid strategy that will help them grow. That’s why KPIs are near and dear to my heart.
KPIs, or key performance indicators, are a way to report your progress toward your goals. Each KPI should be actionable and specific to your business. Keeping these measurements focused will help prevent data overload and allow you to prioritize the work you do.
Many small businesses don’t have the information they need to create a strong growth plan. They often stall out after years of financial growth and hit a natural ceiling. KPIs provide the information business owners need to break through to the next level. They act as guide posts to help you spot trends and identify issues that need a closer look.
Speaking of finances, KPIs can relate to metrics beyond money. For example, a factory can track warehouse capacity and workflow efficiency. Another example is tracking how much time a marketing agency is spending on each client. Creating actionable KPIs will help your bottom line in the long run.
When we work with clients of 415 Access, we discuss what data they’re already tracking, as well as the data they would like to track but are unsure how. We’ve worked with numerous clients across various industries, so we can also suggest ideas they might never have considered.
Once we’ve been tracking KPIs for a while—or even after combing through their existing data—we help them formulate a plan to continue executing well on the ones that are succeeding and suggest ideas to improve the problem areas.
The end result of culling all this data may seem intimidating to sift through. Thankfully, we now have an in-house expert who creates informational dashboards for our clients. Using Power BI – the dashboard software – we can pull in financial and operational data from various sources like QuickBooks and Excel to create visual representations of your company’s performance.
These customized dashboards allow you to see real-time data so you can make real-time decisions. Our guidance with this tool will help you drive performance metrics.
Taking the time to develop a strong growth plan based on your KPIs will make all the difference in the end. If you’re looking to improve your business and take it to the next level, reach out to us at 415 Group today.