Business Analysis is crucial to driving business results.

You as the business leader establish what's important to you, and you build around that. If growth is important for your business, clearly understanding how your business makes money is essential. Once you manage your business by the numbers you will see trends and opportunities making growth more predictable.

For many small business owners accounting is not an area of expertise so they either outsource or manage it on their own. Yet when financials are accurate there are financial statements that when digested tell a story. Once you learn to tap into the financials that are essential to your business you'll be energized to improve or grow specific areas of the business.

As you become more proficient with your financials there are going to be more calculations available that create key performance indicators. It's these calculations between income statement and other variables that create ratios from which you can begin comparing against other periods of time or industy standards. It's these success KPIs that help you performance manage your business.

This strategy requires you to be able to work a spreadsheet or have someone who can help create a 1-page report for you and your managers. These become your most valuable tools to manage your business, outside your financial statement. Depending on your type of business your might have a daily or weekly Scorecard, and you should have a monthly Dashboard. This simplifies managing by the numbers.

Financial reports aren't the only analytics your business has as a resource. Many types of businesses use software applications to capture customer information and data. Usually it's extensive and its reports aren't good. Once you identify the data you seek from these apps it's a process of combining it with data from other sources like financial statements. It's critical data for your Scorecards and Dashboards.

It's hard not to get excited about top line growth, yet the health of the business lies in the margins. It all boils down to understanding variable and fixed costs, and depending on your type of business is going to vary greatly. This is where having past data and setting benchmarks can help guide and keep your business within the guardrails of profitability.

Customer expectations are real and based on your business' past performance. If delivery of product or service isn't within the scope of their expectations your customer experience declines and they will tell you about it. Measuring what your business is capable of and staying within those measures will create consistency, but maybe not growth. These numbers will indicate when systems are stretched.

Business analysis is essential to enhancing precision within your business. Once you feel the power of numbers in your business you can't help but want to improve them, and so will your team members.