Business owners often use metrics to get a broad sense of how their company is doing. One of the most commonly monitored metrics is "profit." However, just measuring profit will do little to give you a holistic view of your business.
Business owners can utilize metrics for much more than keeping track of the money their business is making. You can use metrics to see if a marketing campaign is working, track if a price increase impacted customer numbers, monitor product quality, keep recruitment numbers steady, and more.
In a recent interview with Greg Crabtree of CRI Simple Numbers, Adi and Greg discuss what many company owners fail to measure with their existing metrics systems. Find out more by listening to the podcast episode.
How to Use Metrics to Improve Your Business
There are many, many metrics a business can track. Here are five ways you can utilize those metrics to grow your company.
1. Systematize the essential metrics so you can always track if your business is reaching its goals.
Metrics are most valuable when measured over time. Determine the most essential metrics now and systematize how they are tracked to ensure accuracy over time. This way, you can use them to keep track of your business growth, notice when your company is faltering, and even find the cause of blocked growth.
2. Use metrics to promote accountability
One way to track employee performance is to assign metrics to their work. Comparing past performances with current performance will help management see how the employee is doing and determine if the statistics are on the downswing.
3. Ensure your processes are tied to metrics so you can tell if they are working or not.
At Business Success Consulting Group, we help companies document processes and procedures to create consistency and a firm foundation for growth. Ensure metrics are tied to the task if your company is creating a new process or modifying an existing process. That way, you can determine if the processes or procedures contribute to the company's success or need to be reworked.
4. Check your metrics to make sure they are measuring the basics.
Just about every entrepreneur is familiar with the profit vs. loss metric. However, that measurement does not cover the entire business. Take a look at what else helps your company grow, and be sure to measure that. For example, you may want to monitor how many people are walking through your doors, number of sales, number of free downloads, newsletter subscribers, product returns, number of products shipped, and more. All of these metrics help you understand what contributes to those profit vs. loss numbers so you can do something to increase the profits and reduce the losses.
5. Consider new ways you can utilize metrics.
Companies around the world utilize metrics in various ways.
For example, a company with branches in different cities may utilize metrics to measure how many employees are needed to serve the customers in that city. One city like Chicago may need far more employees than a small city like Asheville. Metrics can approximate how many employees you will need to recruit to ensure the branch succeeds.
Metrics measure the success or failure of a business system. Do a deep dive and discuss your company metrics with the experts. Contact Business Success Consulting Group today.
