Are You Breaking Records or Nearing Disaster in Business

If your business was nearing disaster, would you even know before it's too late?  How would you be allerted to serious problems?  Would you rely on an employee to tell you?  Do you think your competitors are such good friends that they will give you a head's up?  Or, would you need to sort through piles of reports to find problems?  You need a systematic approach for identifying potential problems before they become total nightmares.

On the flip side of that, you also need a way to measure success and break records.  Although it feels good, and it certainly sounds good (at least to you), you can't just go with your gut.  Again - reports:  who has time and if you make time, will you really know what you're looking for?  Will all of the pieces make enough sense that you can do something valuable with it?

I can come up with hundreds of more questions just like the ones above, but the answer is somewhere else all together.  For those of you who were reading my blogs back in 2009, you will remember one called, "Record Breaking Business Tracking Systems".  http://chelmsmba.blogspot.com/2009/02/record-breaking-business-tracking.html  THIS IS THE ANSWER.

These are charts of graphs, often referred to as dashboards, that give you up-to-date reporting that will save your butt and make you a business hero.   With these dashboards, you will track everything that you would otherwise need a long report to figure out.  Someone will report the data and enter it into a simple Excel spreadsheet and the graphing add-in program will create your charts.

Here's the really important reason to use tracking systems.  When you see a drop in production and it lasts 3 weeks, you don't need to wait until 3 months to recognize it and solve the problem.  By then, it could be too late.  If you track new customers and you see that total new customers drops by 3 per week for the last 3 weeks, you give yourself a chance to turn it around before it gets totally out of control.

On the other hand, when something is working really well and you see the graph jump to a new high range, you get an opportunity to figure out how it happened and reinforce what works.

THESE TRACKING SYSTEMS ARE ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL TO BUSINESS SUCCESS!

You may be saying to yourself, "I get it, but I don't need graphs, besides it's just Excel.  Big deal."  You better believe it's a big deal.  It's the single biggest deal I know of to positively affect business growth.  Go back and re-read by previous blog about business tracking systems, then put some serious thought into the following question.

By how much do I want to beat my competition?

Promotions happen from growing the business and beating the competition.
Raises come from growing the business and beating the competition.
Recognition for being a great manager comes from growing the business and beating the compeition.

If you want help setting up your Record Breaking Business Tracking System, then I want to help you.  Contact me and we will work something out that makes sense for you.  I've written the manual on how to create these systems (literally).