Balance Scorecards add Insight

A Balanced Scorecard is used to regularly monitor a business' success on a number of fronts: Sales Pipeline, Marketing Spending, Client Effectiveness, Process Improvements and Financial Results. With such balanced reporting an organization is really forced to own up to its weak points and take actions. But because a Balanced Scorecard covers so many functional areas, it requires a multi-functional effort, plus high-level sponsorship, to successfully launch the report. One word of advice: resist the temptation to load up a Balanced Scorecard with too many metrics, it is best to keep it to 15 or fewer.

It's January, do you know where your budget is?

If your business has not yet created a budget for 2007, it is still worth taking the time to do so. Having a budget gives a comparison basis for each month's actual results, to see where you are ahead and behind pace. To make your budget a more useful management report, try to group p&l lines as follows: 1) cost of revenues, 2) sales and marketing, 3) general & administrative, with sub-totals for each section.