Uncover What Your Numbers Say About Your Business

In a good economy, many small businesses could survive—and even thrive—despite a lack of proactive management. Considering the current economic climate, managing by intuition and gut instinct is no longer much of an option. There’s never been more of a need for business owners to assess and reassess vital aspects of their businesses in a timely manner so that more informed decisions can be made in key areas such as pricing, staffing, inventory, planned expenditures, and more.

A business dashboard is first and foremost a management tool to remove the guesswork from this type of decision-making. Dashboards collate real-time data from various sources in the business and display it on one page, which makes it easier to analyze the business’s current performance. However, if a business owner spends too much time amassing the numbers, many of which don’t substantially affect a firm’s bottom line, there may be little time to analyze and make decisions based on the most vital of numbers. Here are a few tips for creating the most basic business dashboard, which can be used to grow and improve business:

Use existing technology and systems if possible. Don’t get so caught up in the technology that the purpose of a business dashboard is forgotten. While large corporations install enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that automates the collection of data among various departments to build a business dashboard, small businesses can successfully use simpler systems. Business owners typically have systems in place to track their operations and can easily build on these processes.

In many cases, tallying and comparing these figures—revenue, inventory, staffing levels, and sales by product—is just the next step in the tracking process. There are several online resources, including mybizhomepage.com and exceluser.com, that can help you create an efficient dashboard that works directly with your accounting software. To get started, you will need access to Excel, monthly financial statements, and monthly productivity reports, if possible.

Determine which areas/data are most valuable to track