flevyblog

Flevy Blog is an online business magazine covering Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP STRATEGY, MARKETING, SALES OPERATIONS & SUPPLY CHAIN ORGANIZATION & CHANGE IT/MIS Other

4 Ways You Can Track Your Company’s Progress

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, OGSM (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, and Measures) (33-slide PowerPoint presentation). Organizations often face significant challenges in aligning their day-to-day operations with their long-term strategic goals. This issue of strategic misalignment is particularly detrimental to sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and technology, where rapid decision-making and agility are [read more]

Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Performance Management, take a look at Flevy's Performance Management Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

* * * *

For those in management positions, it can sometimes be difficult to stay on top of all of the different ways that your company is making progress. Whether it’s increasing sales, gaining more market share, or reducing debt, it’s important that you’re able to have a consistent idea of your company’s standings.

Though it can seem overwhelming, there are ways that you can effectively track your company’s progress without driving yourself crazy. Having some guidance around useful techniques and practices can greatly impact your ability to stay clear on how your company is doing.

Here are four ways you can track your company’s progress. 

Take Advantage of Consumer Analytics

Consumer analytics now offers businesses the opportunity to understand and track their customers in previously unprecedented ways. If this technology sounds complicated — don’t worry, it’s simpler than it sounds. Put simply, consumer analytics refers to the practice of collecting data about your consumers and analyzing it to help inform the business decisions that you make.

One of the biggest advantages of consumer analytics is the fact that it can allow your business to gain a thorough understanding of the exact types of consumers that are purchasing your products. As such, you have the ability to tailor your marketing efforts directly toward these typed of individuals, giving you more value for the money you spend on marketing. This is one of the main reasons that so many business professionals are becoming more curious about how consumer analytics can grow their businesses.

When it comes to tracking progress, consumer analytics allows you to use actual consumer data, which means there’s no guessing when it comes to tracking progress. With consumer analytics, you can accurately track the progress of things such as marketing campaigns and the amount of market share your company holds.

Given the effectiveness of tracking company performance with consumer analytics, implementing this process is an easy choice for organizations looking for ways to track their progress.

Keep Track of Company Data

When tracking your organization’s progress, it can be difficult to stay on top of all of the different areas of progress you’re trying to measure. By utilizing data, this process becomes far easier and more streamlined. Today, there is no shortage of software with data tracking capabilities. By utilizing this type of software, you’ll be able to gather all of the data you need to accurately track your organization’s progress.

To successfully sort through all of the company data that you collect, it can be useful to utilize the practice of data mining. Data mining is a process that is used to sort through data and identify various trends contained within data sets.

Many organizations are now implementing powerful data mining tools, techniques, and methods into their business processes and are experiencing the benefits of being aware of new trends in real-time. For those looking for ways to track how their company’s progress, utilizing data and the practice of data mining is an amazing way to do so.

Consistently Assess the Effectiveness of Employees

While consumer analytics and data can be great tools for measuring some things, it can get a little trickier when it comes to the performance of your business’s employees. While some employees, such as those in sales or marketing, can have data associated with their output, other roles may not. This being the case, your organization will have to decide how it sees fit to measure employee performance.

One tactic that many organizations engage in when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of employees is regular manager reviews. In these cases, those in leadership roles write reviews of the employees they manage on a consistent basis. By cultivating a practice of regular employee assessment, your company will be able to track the progress of employees more easily and effectively.

Be Aware of Competitors

Though in many cases your organization’s progress can be measured through in-house data, it’s important to be aware of your organization’s competitors and how they are doing in various areas. Having a grasp of other organizations in your industry allows you the chance to develop clearer standards to measure your own organizational data.

One significant way that staying aware of competition can benefit your organization is by having a bar to compare your results to. For example, though it may seem like your organization did extremely well and made enormous progress in a certain quarter, you may find that all of your competitors experienced the same amount of growth.

Bearing this in mind, you’d be able to recalibrate your measures of success and realize that the industry as a whole had a boost, not necessarily your organization. As you can see, staying aware of your organization’s competitors can offer you the chance to measure your organization’s progress more accurately.

Don’t Let Your Company’s Progress Elude You

Though tracking all of the various aspects of your company’s progress can sometimes seem complicated and overwhelming, taking advantage of a few key practices can transform this stressful situation into a manageable task.

So, before you throw in the towel and give up on tracking your company’s progress, give these practices a try and watch as they help your organization grow and thrive.

23-slide PowerPoint presentation
Successful organizations are using Objectives and Key Results (OKR) now. OKRs are efficient way to track company and team goals and measure their progress. It helps every organization's success by cutting out unimportant goals and focusing on what truly is important within the organization. OKR [read more]

Want to Achieve Excellence in Performance Management?

Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Performance Management. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.

Performance Management (also known as Strategic Performance Management, Performance Measurement, Business Performance Management, Enterprise Performance Management, or Corporate Performance Management) is a strategic management approach for monitoring how a business is performing. It describes the methodologies, metrics, processes, systems, and software that are used for monitoring and managing the business performance of an organization.

As Peter Drucker famously said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."

Having a structured and robust Strategic Performance Management system (e.g. the Balanced Scorecard) is critical to the sustainable success of any organization; and affects all areas of our organization.

Learn about our Performance Management Best Practice Frameworks here.

Readers of This Article Are Interested in These Resources


115-slide PowerPoint presentation
Curated by McKinsey-trained Executives Unlock Business Success with the Comprehensive Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures (OGSM) Business Toolkit: A 110+ Slides PowerPoint Deck In the ever-evolving landscape of business, strategic planning is the cornerstone that [read more]


 
25-slide PowerPoint presentation
 
 
129-slide PowerPoint presentation

About Shane Avron

Shane Avron is a freelance writer, specializing in business, general management, enterprise software, and digital technologies. In addition to Flevy, Shane's articles have appeared in Huffington Post, Forbes Magazine, among other business journals.


Complimentary Business Training Guides


Many companies develop robust strategies, but struggle with operationalizing their strategies into implementable steps. This presentation from flevy introduces 12 powerful business frameworks spanning both Strategy Development and Strategy Execution. [Learn more]

  This 48-page whitepaper, authored by consultancy Envisioning, provides the frameworks, tools, and insights needed to manage serious Change—under the backdrop of the business lifecycle. These lifecycle stages are each marked by distinct attributes, challenges, and behaviors. [Learn more]

We've developed a very comprehensive collection of Strategy & Transformation PowerPoint templates for you to use in your own business presentations, spanning topics from Growth Strategy to Brand Development to Innovation to Customer Experience to Strategic Management. [Learn more]

  We have compiled a collection of 10 Lean Six Sigma templates (Excel) and Operational Excellence guides (PowerPoint) by a multitude of LSS experts. These tools cover topics including 8 Disciplines (8D), 5 Why's, 7 Wastes, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), and DMAIC. [Learn more]
Recent Articles by Corporate Function

  

  

  

  

  

The Flevy Business Blog (https://flevy.com/blog) is a leading source of information on business strategies, business theories, and business stories. Most of our articles are authored by management consultants and industry executives with over 20 years of experience.

Flevy (https://flevy.com) is the marketplace for business best practices, such as management frameworks, presentation templates, and financial models. Our best practice documents are of the same caliber as those produced by top-tier consulting firms (like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, BCG, and Deloitte) and used by Fortune 100 organizations. Learn more about Flevy here.
  


OUR CORE OFFERINGS
Flevy Marketplace: Top 100
· Strategy & Transformation
· Digital Transformation
· Operational Excellence
· Organization & Change
· Financial Models
· Consulting Frameworks
· PowerPoint Templates
FlevyPro (Subscription Service)
KPI Library
Streams (Functional Bundles)
Flevy Executive Learning (FEL)
PowerPoint Services

FREE Resources

About Flevy
Management Topics
Marcus (AI-Powered Consultant)
Partner Program
LinkedIn Influencer Marketing
FAQ / Terms / Privacy / Blog
Contact Us: support@flevy.com



CONNECT WITH US!
       
TOP 100 TRENDING TOPICS
Acquisition Strategy
Agile
Analytics
Artificial Intelligence
Balanced Scorecard
Best Practices
Big Data
Breakout Strategy
Business Continuity Planning
Business Plan Financial Model
Business Transformation
CMMI
COBIT
Change Management
Cloud
Communications Strategy
Company Financial Model
Competitive Advantage
Competitive Analysis
Consulting Frameworks
Continuous Improvement
Core Competencies
Corporate Culture
Cost Reduction Assessment
Customer Experience

BROWSE BY FUNCTION
Strategy, Transformation, & Innovation
Digital Transformation
Operational Excellence and LSS
Organization, Change, & HR
Management Consulting

Customer Journey
Customer Service
Cyber Security
Data Privacy
Decision Making
Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation Strategy
Due Diligence
ESG
Employee Engagement
Employee Training
Enterprise Architecture
Growth Strategy
HR Strategy
Hiring
Hoshin Kanri
ISO 27001
ITIL
Information Technology
Innovation Management
Integrated Financial Model
Kaizen
Kanban
Key Performance Indicators

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Business Strategy Frameworks
Case Studies
Consulting Training Guides
COVID-19 Trend Data
Digital Transformation
Financial Advising Services (FAS)

Knowledge Management
Leadership
Lean
Lean Manufacturing
Logistics
M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions)
Manufacturing
Market Research
Marketing Plan Development
Maturity Model
McKinsey PowerPoint
McKinsey Templates
Operational Excellence
Organizational Change
Organizational Design
Performance Management
Post-merger Integration
Pricing Strategy
Process Improvement
Process Maps
Procurement Strategy
Product Launch Strategy
Product Strategy
Project Management
Quality Management


Free Resources
KPI Library
Lean Management
Lean Six Sigma Training Guides
Marcus Insights
Operational Excellence

Real Estate
Remote Work
Restructuring
Risk Management
Robotic Process Automation
SWOT
SaaS
Sales
Scrum
Service Design
Six Sigma Project
Social Media Strategy
Strategic Planning
Strategic Thinking
Strategy Development
Supply Chain Analysis
Sustainability
Target Operating Model
Team Management
Total Productive Maintenance
Value Chain Analysis
Value Creation
Value Stream Mapping
Visual Workplace
Workplace Safety


Product Strategy
Small Business Owner
Startup Resources
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning Process
Value Innovation Strategy


© 2012-2024 Copyright. Flevy LLC. All Rights Reserved.