BUSINESS Using Dashboard Reports you see on the dashboard of your car. For your business, your dashboard report is a display of various barometers that pro- vide a snapshot of what’s happing in your business. Why Should I Have One? OK, so I get why an instrument panel is important for driving my vehicle or piloting my spacecraſt, but why do I need such an instrument panel for my business? The short answer is that you are probably busy taking care of all the various parts of your business and this means that you could easily miss or overlook some signs of trouble. If you encounter issues (or perhaps see subtle trends) in your business, the sooner you become aware of them, the better. What Information Should Be Included? Just like your medical doctor wants to check your so-called vital signs, it’s the same idea with your business. Such vital signs may not immediately get to the bottom of your ailment, but hopefully they will enable your physician to conduct a rapid process of elimination. Coupled with any symptoms you may be exhibiting, these important vital signs help zero in on whichever area may need further scrutiny. Sure, some further tests may be required, but now we have a much better idea of where to take a closer look. So, all that medical stuff makes sense, but what kind of infor- mation do I need to include in my dashboard report? Since each business is somewhat unique, we’ll begin on a generic level with the three primary pillars of any business: sales, production and finance. Let’s be clear: Your dashboard report is not intended to be a substitute for a set of more targeted and detailed reports that you should have to help manage your business successfully. Rather than jump ahead to creating a dashboard report, let’s discuss the kinds of information and data you may choose to collect and why. Also, remember that, to be an effective tool, your dashboard report should feature daily numbers/data. Sales When we use the term sales in this context, we’re referring to the broader term “business development.” I say this because your company structure may or may not include a separate marketing department or person. Of course, depending upon the nature of your business, you may want or need to make a few modifications to fit your situation when employing the fol- lowing principles. On a high level, we’re interested in keeping track daily of at least the new business coming in the door. It’s also a good idea to track these sales numbers on a cumulative basis for each month, quarter 16 KEYNOTES FEBRUARY 2021 and year. So, your report should include daily sales volume, but you may prefer to also have separate sub-categories of sales (such as installations, repairs, products, services or whichever sales sub- categories you prefer to track), and then have a total sales number. Remember: If you spot something going on in your dashboard report’s sales numbers, you’ll likely need to drill down to deter- mine the more specific area and cause. As a word of caution, keep in mind that the more you clutter up your report, the greater the effort required to maintain and update the daily data. If you try capturing too much data, your dashboard report will likely take more effort than it’s worth, you’ll become frus- trated, and your report will fail. Pause now briefly and start planning who to ultimately blame if this doesn’t work out well for you! Incidentally, if this blame art (aka CYA) comes natu- rally to you, congratulations: You’re a good potential fit for Corporate America — or possibly government. Decide whether to consider your sales as “orders generated” or “orders filled and invoiced.” To many firms, sales numbers represent what has been invoiced, whereas others look at what are called bookings: orders received but not yet filled. To figure this out, consider what type of business you’re in, your business cycle and especially how long it takes to move from receiving an order to when you complete the work (or ship the product) and generate the invoice. You also need to consider the inter- nal system you use for tracking such data. Of course, you can track your sales by both bookings/orders and shipments/in- voiced. For project/jobs work (especially anything construc- tion related), you may also be dealing with progress payments where you’ll be generating invoices for partial completion at various billing milestones. As an example, manufacturing firms will typically be very interested in bookings (orders received) and backlog (orders remaining open). Fundamentally, this data is crucial to their planning decisions. In other words, they’re trying to anticipate demand versus on-hand inventory. If they don’t have what’s needed in stock, they’ll have to build something. This, in turn, often translates into issues of capacity in terms of machine time, labor, buying materials and scheduling. All of this must be balanced with suppliers’ lead times and customers’ required shipment dates. Similarly, if you are running a service business, you’ll be interested in trying to schedule your crews and may also need to order materials required to complete jobs. Production To determine what to track in the production area, consider which services and/or products your business is providing. WWW.ALOA.ORG
