If you have a clear business plan and real-time reporting directing the business is as straightforward as driving a car with satnav: you know where you are going and your rate of progress at all times.
Real-time reporting? Monthly accounts (Profit & Loss Report and Balance Sheet) form the basis of most companies’ management information. But even in a well-disciplined organisation where these reports are finalised by the 10th of the following month, the bald truth is the horse has already bolted by the last day of the month, let alone ten days later.
For years, most of us have wrestled with this issue, clamouring to find early warning signals so that we can control the monthly outcome. We can address and improve this.
Returning to the analogy of “driving with satnav”, cloud-based collaborative reporting can provide exactly that.
Imagine being able to open your smart phone anywhere in the world and look at the fruits of your entire organisation’s efforts at any given moment with a traffic light colour code to indicate the status of key performance indicators. This sorcery is not the function of expensive, bespoke software, it is much simpler than that and, if we have been through the process of business planning, this is one of the outcomes.
These dashboards are one of my specialities and there are examples of their use in my stories.