Audaxium Blog

Right now the News is filled with bad press about the economy. Last weeks Economist painted a particularly gloomy picture.

It’s all well and good to simply unsubscribe from the news feeds but that won’t make you successful in the long run, just maybe less stressed.

Right now a lot of businesses are waiting cautiously, not spending money, but waiting for signs of a turnaround.  Cruising along. Perhaps your business is one of them.

So how will you know when a turn around is beginning for your business?  Your business is unique, it won’t simply happen for everyone at once.  For some it’s already starting, for others, they may have to reinvent themselves to simply stay afloat.

Will you wait until you’ve had two good sales quarters in a row?  How long does it take to roll up a quarter?  1 Month?  That might just be looking 7 months into the rear view mirror.

Will you wait until you’ve had 2 good months over targets?  Can you be sure that it’s not a lucky blip?

Will you watch the forecast, and when it starts to grow, start investing in your business?  How reliable is your forecast?  What’s driving the uptick?

Will you look at inbound leads? When they start increasing, turn up the heat on the reps.  How will you know where the leads are coming from and what their intent is?

Unfortunately there’s no one answer but I can say one thing for certain.  Those companies that only look far in the past for recovery will do less well than a firm with a balanced view of it’s KPI’s

The questions to ask yourself are:

• “Do I have the systems in place to get me the numbers I need, and trust, fast enough to react in a timely fashion?”
• “What are the 3 pieces of data I need to predict the direction my business is headed?”

If you’ve got the systems, great.  If not, give me a call.  Now’s the time to invest to ensure that your business can really be excellent once everything is moving again.  Don’t wait until you’re too busy to become more productive.

Here are some example Key Performance Indicators that NetSuite Provides out of the box. Perhaps some of these could help if you had them on your dashboard every day. Keep in mind that you can create your own KPI’s as well!

• Authorized Commission
• Authorized Partner Commission
• Bank Balance
• Cases Escalated
• Cases Closed
• Cart Abandonment
• Closed Issues
• COGS
• Credit Card Balance
• Equity
• Estimated Commission
• Estimated Partner Commission
• Fixed Assets
• Forecast Override
• Gross New Leads
• Hosted Page Hits
• Inventory
• Long Term Liabilities
• Net Cash Flow
• New Business (Sales Orders)
• New Customers
• New Customers (Sales Orders)
• New Issues
• New Opportunities
• New Visitors
• Open Issues
• Open Opportunities
• Open Prospects
• Open Quotes
• Operating Cash Flow
• Operating Expenses
• Opportunities Lost
• Orders
• Other Assets
• Other Current Assets
• Other Current Liabilities
• Paid Commission
• Paid Partner Commission
• Payables
• Pipeline (Projected)
• Pipeline (Weighted)
• Pipeline Deals
• Profit
• Quota Reps
• Receivables
• Revenue
• Sales (Cash Basis)
• Sales (Orders)
• Total Open Opportunities
• Total Open Quotes
• Total Orders (Count)
• Total Pipeline (Projected)
• Total Pipeline (Weighted)
• Total Pipeline Deals
• Total Sales (Orders)
• Unique Visitors
• Web Orders
• Web Revenue
• Web Site Hits