Managing your company’s performance has now become a must. Strong competitive pressure, fluctuating markets, the need to reassure investors… All these are reasons to develop a relevant and effective management system. A survey conducted by PwC at the end of 2017 confirmed that management was the number one priority for CFOs.
But why managing ?
The first reason is to be able to anticipate. Making reliable forecasts and giving you visibility in the short, medium and long term is essential to keep your company competitive. Thanks to your management indicators, you will be able to link your strategy with market developments and thus determine your budgets and objectives for the desired period.
Setting goals is good, but achieving them and exceeding them is even better. With your indicators you will be able to closely monitor the achievement of your goals. You will be able to act quickly if you find too large a deviation from the forecast. Without a management tool, you only act after the fact and it is often too late to reverse the trend.
By disseminating information, you will motivate your teams and involve them in the development of your company.
Managing with the right tools
When we talk about management, we immediately think of performance indicators (or KPI or metrics). Choosing relevant indicators is a step not to be overlooked. The goal is not to have a succession of complex numbers. Choose only the ones that are most relevant to your business and the ones that will allow you to act on your performance.
Then gather your indicators in dashboards. These tables will synthesize your data to reflect your company’s results. They allow you to get an overview of the most relevant and revealing indicators of performance. Each service or activity in your company can have its own personalized dashboard with its own indicators. Again, ask yourself which data is useful. Also try to integrate what is called “Data Visualization”: instead of having a table full of numbers, a visual representation of each indicator is much more telling.
Use a software for your management. Often, dashboards are made with Excel. Nowadays, you can simplify the implementation of your management with a software in SaaS mode and the digitalization of your dashboards: for this, choose Perfactor.