Unless you had access to your own crystal ball, you couldn’t have anticipated the events of the last few years. Hopefully you created a plan, a forecast, and even a budget when you began 2020. You thought you were in pretty good shape — until you weren’t. Suddenly you and your customers were in the middle of a pandemic. Stores closed, employees stayed home and buying habits changed.
How quickly were you able to respond to the rapidly changing marketplace?
In order to be the kind of business that can quickly and effectively respond to changes of any kind you need a strong foundation. One that is built on not only a solid financial plan but more importantly, considers your customers, operations, and the kind of people you employ. Today’s fluid environment requires strong leadership that relies on data for good decision making and includes everyone in the planning. The pandemic gave leaders an opportunity to really get clear about business and personal priorities, about the limitations of current systems and technology and about strengths and weakness in their teams.
Were you able to get the kind of insights you needed, when you needed them? What did you discover about your business during this time? What changes did you make on the fly? What changes will you carry forward into whatever comes next?
At KRD, we help our clients become more resilient by starting with the basics, by first capturing WHY they exist and then helping them align their mission (WHAT they do) and core values (HOW they do it). Only then can we consider the 4 main pillars of their business – Financial, Customer, Operations, and People and how their teams are connected and empowered to contribute to overall financial results.
Contrary to what many owners believe, long term success requires more than a clear vision at the top – it requires transparency across the business for everyone who has an impact on overall results. That includes owners, managers, and individual line workers. The more information available to all levels of a team, the better the insights that will be available in times of change and the faster changes can be implemented.
If you want to be resilient, train your teams, share results as they happen, gather inputs from all of your employees, and look for ways to make your customer interactions seamless and easy.
How are you turning data into insights in your business? We can help.
