The Ignite Spot Blog

Business Metrics Dashboard Now Available at Ignite Spot

Written by Eddy Hood | May 18, 2013

Want to put your business in the top 2% of companies in your industry? That’s hard to do when you don’t have the right financial information.

We’re excited to let everyone know that we've just launched our new business metrics dashboard. It’s an online financial dashboard that monitors the 3 – 5 key metrics within your business that drive your success.

Quick! What are the 3 – 5 numbers that should be on your business metrics dashboard? It's no secret that business metrics are important. Let's get your business up and running with the right information.

Some questions to ask when building your business metrics dashboard:

  1. Why do your customers pay you? What do they value and can you measure that for improvement? If so, you may want to track how often you provide that value.
  2. How are your costs structured? Do your costs increase with your revenues? If so, you may want to track gross margin.
  3. Do you spend a lot on a single expense like marketing or payroll? If so, you may want to track that expense as a % of revenue.

These three examples give you an idea of the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself as a business owner. For more examples, check out Jeff Hayden's post at Inc.com titled 4 Business Metrics You Cant Ignore.

Once you've identified your 3 – 5 key metrics, you need to focus on them like a little boy standing in the candy store. If you wrap your business around improving those metrics, you’ll build more profits, better relationships and a stronger tribe as Seth Godin would say.

Very few companies have access to business metric information.

Why is that?

I've found that most people are put off by finances. They prefer to do other things and ignore the accounting. Here's the secret though...

Wealthy people are wealthy because they track their wealth. Poor people are poor because they swipe their debit card without a plan.

p.s. Did you know that 96% of companies go out of business within the first 10 years? How much of that do you think is attributed to entrepreneurs not doing what we’ve talked about today? Poor financial habits are the #1 killer of small businesses. Don’t be a statistic.