Getting A Quick Look at Your Company's Vital Metrics

If you spend a lot of time out of the office, how do you keep up with what's happening while you're away?

Jennifer Walzer, CEO of New York-based BackUpMyInfo, wrote on December 1 in The New York Times Small Business blog that, in addition to informal feedback from company insiders, you need to have a more formal system of metrics to see what has been happening and the direction the business is going in.

"I need to know how many leads come in each week, how many go to trial and how many clients close. I would like to know all of this on a per-source basis -- how much money is being generated by my sales team, my telemarketers, our partners, client referrals, public relations and media, etc.

"On the other side of the business, I need to know exactly how many support calls my engineers
handle each week. Finally, I want to be able to get a snapshot of our average client in terms of revenue and data storage -- both overall and by source. For us to assess our performance, we need to start to document this on a weekly basis."

Walzer says they are tracking these things in "some way," but it is not as organized as it should be. She says she needs to know where they are growing, and where to focus the company's time, energy and dollars. Maybe it means hiring another sales person or a dedicated partner relationship manager. Maybe it means focusing more on PR.

"I also owe it to my employees to provide structure and accountability for their performances," she writes. "If I want to provide my employees with clearly defined expectations and then hold them accountable, I have to have a way to measure their performance."

It may be as simple as developing an executive dashboard using Excel, she says. Her Entrepreneurs Organization forum teammate Gary Tuerack, from the National Society of Leadership and Success, created one for his organization, she says.

The idea of an executive dashboard is a good one, whether or not you are out of the office for long stretches of time.