Business performance is a key indicator that shows a company's success in the long term. It can be one of the main reasons why investors would choose to fund the company. There are many ways to measure and improve performance which will be discussed in more detail.
Key performance indicators
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure employee performance, financial performance, and overall business success. The two most common types of KPIs are quantitative and qualitative indicators.
Quantitative indicators
It's mostly about financial metrics that can be assigned a numeric value: revenue and profits. Sales made, employees hired, leads converted, etc. It's relatively easy and straightforward to measure.
Qualitative indicators
These indicators cannot be assigned a number. It's mostly about the quality of service, product satisfaction, etc. Qualitative measurement focuses on intangible values such as experiences and feelings.
Why is it important to track business performance?
Tracking performance is one of the main indicators that signal your business' well-being. Setting business goals is important, but tracking them and making sure they bring value is essential.
Mainly, there are two reasons why keeping track of business performance is important.
Ensuring business success
The definition of business success can vary from business to business. For example, some companies rely on attracting investors, seeking to get financial influx to grow their business. Other companies might want to avoid publicity and try to achieve their goals on their own, without the help of investment institutions.
In this article, we will focus more on the companies that want to draw investors’ attention.
With that said, good business performance attracts investors to your company. Investors, in turn, can help your company grow exponentially. Therefore, it's crucial to track and maintain performance to notice poor financial management and other vices before it's too late.
Competitor analysis
Tracking your business performance means you can also track your competitors and compare. It's an essential step in keeping up with other players in your field.
Market research helps you realize what products or services are in higher demand and how your competition reacts. You may find that your business is doing better in some areas and your competitors take the lead in others.
That way, you know what you need to improve to be more successful and stay ahead of the competition.
How to improve business performance?
There are 5 main steps to help you improve business performance:
- Define where you want to go;
- Select business goals;
- Make a plan to achieve those goals;
- Find the best-fit talent;
- Monitor performance and results.
Let's discuss those steps in more detail.
1. Define where you want to go
First and foremost, it's imperative to establish what you want to achieve. To do that, you need to commission specific market research.
Find out about new, emerging services in the market, the financial perspective of your business growth, establish key metrics by which you will be measuring success, take into account some external factors that could positively or negatively impact your business, and collect competitor information in the field.
These are a few essential things you need to do to define where you want to go with your business ventures.
2. Select business goals
Setting specific business goals can be a very valuable management tool for your company's success. However, don't make the mistake of falling into the void of making unrealistic goals.
Annual goals are good, but quarterly goals are even better in the long run. Dividing the work as much as possible will help avoid burnout and set you up for a successful run.
For instance, if you'd like to reach 1 million recurring revenue at the end of the year, it would be logical to divide that into four quarters of 250K revenue. Goals are one of the most objective criteria for business performance measurement.
The same applies to onboarding new people, implementing sound financial strategies, and overall business procedures.
3. Make a plan to achieve those goals
Once you have established some of your business goals, now it's time to pave the way for them. Achieving goals might vary in difficulty, depending on your market position, competitive advantages, and overall business efficiency.
If you're a new company looking to enter the market, chances are you're not yet in a very good position to make consistent, large-scale sales. Therefore, you need to analyze the competition. Specifically your closest competitors.
Monitor their actions, marketing techniques, target audience, product development, etc. Take note of any business inefficiencies that competition shows. Build your business strategy based on data. Plan effectively. Make it better. Gather business intelligence that will help you make better decisions.
4. Find the best-fit talent
Now that you have sketched a plan, it's time to source the needed talent. Establish a number of specialists needed to reach certain objectives in every department. Define the qualities that you expect of the candidates, both personal and professional. Try to gather a team that will work well on both levels.
The best way to source talent is through data. Coresignal's employee data allows you to find the best talent without accidental hiring bias. You can see the candidates' experience, location, education, connections, and more.
Forget about screening the internet manually in hopes of finding a person that even remotely fits your job description. Instead, choose from a list of candidates that fit your criteria and save massive amounts of time and resources.
5. Monitor performance and results
At this point, you will have defined where you want your business to go, set business goals, made plans to achieve them, and found relevant people. Now what's left to do is enjoy the results. That is, if you had put enough effort in the previous steps.
Monitoring performance can be done in a variety of ways. From financial review, customer satisfaction, net profit, cash flow, and number of current customers, to employee performance, company accounts, and what market research companies say about you.
As you can see, there are many options for measuring performance and it's up to you to implement specific management systems that will help keep track of the information.
Summary
All in all, tracking business performance is an important part of keeping a business healthy and thriving. It helps define certain business decisions to make or avoid. It provides many benefits that will help your company in the long run.
Monitoring performance allows you to make decisions based on customer feedback, sales data, commissioned market research, and other factors.
