On this episode, how well do you use your reports and KPIs in your business?
Many businesses have KPIs and various reports. A lot of time, energy, and money is put into creating these various reports, but often I find that businesses don’t actually know how to use the information that they have available to them. Dashboards sit dormant in various folders, dashboards might be live on systems, but nobody’s ever using that information. KPIs aren’t brought into meetings and aren’t focused on in a proactive, forward-thinking way. If this is the case with you, then you need to stop, collaborate and listen, reset, and start using the information available to you.
The goal here is not to have various reports in KPI dashboards. The goal is to use that information to identify risks in good time. You want to know that you are at risk of missing a target, or that you are at risk of running into cash flow problems, or that you are at risk of potentially not being able to deliver what sales have brought in. Knowing that you’ve got a problem in eight weeks’ time gives you options. Knowing that you’ve got a problem tomorrow just gives you sleepless nights.
The next thing you want to do is make sure that your KPIs and your various reports help you understand if the things that you are putting in place are working. Are they moving the needle? A great KPI dashboard will give you instant feedback, and that feedback is important because you can either change what you’re doing or you can stop what you’re doing and try something else.
Finally, your KPIs and your reports should provide insights into what you should be focusing on in the week ahead and the month ahead. If you don’t use this information to do these three things, frankly, you might as well not even have it. Remember, the goal isn’t to have fancy reporting. The goal is to use the reporting that you have in a meaningful way to help you get better results.
You need to look at your business, look at the various reports that you have, and you have to do a bit of an audit. Ask yourself: Do we have the right information? Is it being presented in the right way? And are we using it? If you aren’t using it, figure out how you should start to use it. Often, you could do things like align various KPIs and reports to specific goals across the business. Sometimes it’s just about taking some time to make sure that people prepare and look at those KPIs and come into the meeting with an insight as to which numbers are at risk. Sometimes it’s about you just taking that five minutes and looking at the numbers in that meeting with your team but knowing which numbers matter the most.
Do not waste precious resource data, information, and insights. Use that information to help you get better results. Where are the gaps, and what are you going to do about it?
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