Why do you need a dashboard to run your business? A simple example: Trying out a new ice cream shop.
When you hop in the car and head off to a new ice cream shop, some place you really want to go, but you haven’t been before…You enter ice cream shop’s address in your GPS, turn the key, take your car out of park and start your mission, right?
Can you imagine driving without a dashboard? No indication of your car’s speed? Not knowing how much gas you have left? Would you feel comfortable to ask your passenger to guess if you were in drive, neutral, reverse, or park based on how the car was moving?
Driving this way would be ludicrous, yet many business owners are trying to run a business this way!
Here’s a five question test that will tell you if you have an adequate dashboard and reporting system in your company. Take 30 seconds and respond YES or NO to the following:
1. Do you have to go to more than one screen to find out how your business is doing in: sales, cash status, team member utilization, and customer satisfaction? YES / NO
2. Do you wait until the end of the month to determine if your business was profitable? YES / NO
3. Does your team re-enter the same data in multiple locations to service or invoice your customers? YES / NO
4. Do you get a daily email telling you how your company is doing? YES / NO (No here would indicate that you have to log into a system and pull a report)
5. Are all of your reports built by someone on your team in excel? YES / NO
If you answered YES to more than one of the above questions, your business is in need of a dashboard. A dashboard is a special report that provides up to the minute information on your company’s health, just like the dashboard in your car.
Dashboards should be simple, with 3 or 4 gauges for newer managers and 6 gauges for seasoned executives. Think of the difference between the dashboard of the car that you drove when you were 16—fuel gauge and speedometer versus the dashboard you depend on to keep you and your family safe and comfortable—fuel gauge, speedometer, tire pressure, oil, air bags, seat belts, etc. We can help you figure out the dashboard that is best suited for you and your team.
If you are interested in learning more about dashboards, and how they have helped our business and many others, reach out to me, and I will go over them with you.
~Bruce
