Peerview Data Insights

What's your pain point?

It's a common question and one of the main reasons CPAs use our client analytics & benchmarking tool:  so they can easily identify, isolate and address the issues that are causing their clients trouble.

What's interesting is that whatever specific problem the company is dealing with — high costs, bad cash flow, even turnover — it can often be traced back to the same core set of questions or challenges:

1. How fast should we grow?
2. How much revenue should we expect from our people?
3. Do our costs compare to our competitors?
4. Is our marketing right?
5. Are we missing anything obvious?

Why are these questions at the heart of so many problems?

In a recent article we were reading, New Gen Apps lists 5 of the main competitive advantages that  big data analytics provides: 

_______________________________

The office is quiet…eerie even. No more stacks of files. All the coffee mugs you've accumulated over the weeks are back in the break room sink. You feel a sense of relief wash over you… can it be? Is this tax season really finally over?

_______________________________

Thinking about taking on an investor or selling your company?

As with real estate, it's important to take into consideration where you are in comparison to your competitors. Once you see where you stand, you can adjust the numbers and test which areas in your business could be improved or should be adjusted further in order to better your position in the market.

As a company, planning out where to use your resources can be tricky. There are often questions that arise that, on your own, there’s often no way of finding the answer to without the simple method of trial and error. Trial and error, however, is a high-stake game when it comes to your business’ resources. You need answers to questions like:

_______________________________

Your clients’ numbers are trickling in, the buttons on your calculator are starting to wear thin, and your phone won’t stop ringing. How long have you had that ringing sound in your ears? What day is it? How many cups of coffee have you had now? Does it matter? Nope. It's tax season.

_______________________________

My little nephew and I planted flowers in a window box together last spring. Week by week he would come and visit and check on it or call asking me to send photos of the little sproutling and how much it had grown to his mom's phone. The progress was exciting. Watching it go from little seed to full-grown plant was amazing to him. The excitement he felt for growth is probably similar to the feeling you feel when you track your customer growth with your company. There's a pride in seeing the numbers rise and letting it resonate that "hey, I did that". 

Whether you're the boss, the owner of the company, or simply a devoted employee: the decisions you make matter. Sometimes your decisions have such weight they can seem almost debilitating. In either case, this Harvard Business Review article is a good read because it shares insights on three things that can help you make decisions more efficiently in life and business. 

I was out to dinner with friends this weekend when someone brought up "the NASA method" of problem solving. This approach is derived from when NASA was putting a man on the moon. When they'd hold meetings, NASA had everyone sit in (from rocket scientists to the custodial staff) because they wanted everyone to be on the same page about the mission status so no ideas were left unexplored. Even ideas from those who didn't have a degree in rocket science.

Why?

NASA realized there's no way it would've been able to carry out a mission as big as landing a man on the moon without tapping into every resource.

Small business is the same way. 

What's more important, today or tomorrow? For most companies, one big struggle is not just balancing short-term needs with long-term goals and priorities, but figuring out a good, simple way to track how well that's going. 

_______________________________

_______________________________