If not why?……..Everyone talks about the importance of management information, not many people tell you what you should be looking at, why those are the key triggers and how to get that detail out of your systems.

Starting point

When starting up a business the prime focus is around are you making any money, are the incoming fees less than the costs / salaries.

We then start to look at forecasting what we hope to achieve, too often this is a pipe dream rather than realistic.

Occasionally in this world of social media we look at who is looking at us.

What should we be considering?

Absolutely the accounts are a must, understanding what you are / are not making financially is important for helping to make crucial investment decisions, but why not also look at:-

Finance

• Actual to forecast, are you on forecast, if so are your assumptions right or do you need to revisit them, if not where has it gone wrong.
• Where you are getting the sales / leads from, is it where you expected or do you need to readdress your marketing. If the leads are coming from another area, you could look at jumping on the bandwagon and develop both markets?
• Customer feedback / complaints, do you look at the root cause of complaints and is there anyway you can improve anything
• Average size of order, again can this help round your product further.

Delivery

• Average actions per person based on team and then benchmarked across all members individually, do you have any performance issues to address.
• Average length of call & time spent wrapping up after a call
• Volume of calls
• Main queries, and then look at whether the main query can be eliminated, made easier through either more information at other points in the customer journey.

Customers

• Number of orders placed and frequency per client, could there be some value added you can help with to support customer retention.
• Volumes, seasonality and trends, do you have clients that work opposite each other to help you map the resources required to keep your business working successfully.

The next step is to take the information output from the above to help you identify process efficiencies, potential staff training needs (longer calls) and methods to improve the customer journey (calls per order).

http://www.propolis-ps.co.uk/services.html

If you would like help in progressing these areas, please feel free to contact us.

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