26Point Checklist

The framework · Business Operations

21 Data, Measurement & Decision Intelligence

12 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time8.5/10Financial7.9/10Automation9.3/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

21.1

Key performance indicators

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
The small set of measures that actually tell you whether the business is working.
Why it matters
Measuring everything is the same as measuring nothing. A short list, watched consistently, changes behaviour; a long dashboard nobody reads does not.
You have a problem here if
You track more than a dozen measures and act on none of them weekly.
What to automate
Automate collection and display; choose the measures by hand. Aim for five to seven, each with an owner and a threshold that triggers a conversation.
21.2

Data accuracy

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether the numbers can be trusted — complete, current, and consistently defined.
Why it matters
Bad data is worse than no data because it is acted upon. Most disputes about reports are really disputes about definitions.
You have a problem here if
Two reports of the same thing produce different numbers.
What to automate
Automate validation at entry, reconciliation between systems, and completeness checks with alerts. Write down the definition of each measure once, and reference it from every report.
21.3

Data accessibility

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
Whether the people who need data can get it without asking someone.
Why it matters
Nine for time, ten for automation. Every report request that goes through a person is a queue, a delay, and a decision made later than it should have been.
You have a problem here if
Getting a number means asking the owner or the bookkeeper.
What to automate
Self-service dashboards with appropriate access control. Automating a report request is good; removing the need to request it is better.
21.4

Reporting

Time10/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
The regular reporting that tells the business how it is doing.
Why it matters
Ten for time, ten for automation. Manual report assembly is one of the largest recurring time costs in a small business and adds no value at all — the value is in reading it.
You have a problem here if
Someone spends a day each month building the management pack.
What to automate
Automate end to end: scheduled, generated from source systems, delivered without anyone touching it. Free the time for interpretation, which is the part that actually helps.
21.5

Dashboards

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
Live visual views of current performance, built for the decisions they support.
Why it matters
A dashboard makes the state of the business ambient rather than requested. Its value is in reducing the delay between something changing and someone noticing.
You have a problem here if
You find out about a drop weeks after it started.
What to automate
Build few, build them for decisions, and automate the refresh. Resist the temptation to include everything available — a dashboard with forty tiles is a wall, not a tool.
21.6

Financial/operational visibility

Time9/10Financial9/10Automation10/10
What this is
Being able to see, at any time, how the business is performing financially and operationally.
Why it matters
Nine for both time and financial, ten for automation. Visibility is what shortens the gap between a problem starting and a decision being made.
You have a problem here if
Financial and operational data live in separate places and are never seen together.
What to automate
Integrate the accounting, CRM and operational systems into one reporting layer. This is the foundational data project for a small business and it pays back across every other category in this framework.
21.7

Forecasting

Time9/10Financial9/10Automation10/10
What this is
Predicting what is likely to happen, in revenue, demand, cash and capacity.
Why it matters
Nine, nine and ten. Forecasting converts management from reactive to planned, and it is the highest-value analytical capability a small business can develop.
You have a problem here if
Planning is based on last year plus a percentage.
What to automate
Automate forecasts from pipeline, seasonality and historical conversion, and — importantly — automate the comparison of past forecasts to actuals so accuracy improves. An unreviewed forecast never gets better.
21.8

Customer analytics

Time8/10Financial9/10Automation10/10
What this is
Understanding customer behaviour from data: cohorts, segments, patterns, and what predicts churn.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten for automation. Customer analytics is where the data you already hold turns into retention and revenue decisions.
You have a problem here if
You have years of transaction history and have never analysed it.
What to automate
Automate cohort retention, segment profitability, purchase-interval and churn-risk analysis. The data almost always exists already; the analysis is the missing piece and it is a scheduled job.
21.9

Performance trends

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
Seeing direction of travel rather than isolated points.
Why it matters
Nine for time, ten for automation. Single-period comparisons produce false alarms and missed declines in roughly equal measure.
You have a problem here if
Reporting is month-versus-month with no longer view.
What to automate
Rolling averages, year-on-year comparison and trend lines on every key measure, generated automatically. Cheap to add and it materially improves the quality of every review.
21.10

Experiment measurement

Time8/10Financial7/10Automation9/10
What this is
Measuring whether the changes you make actually work.
Why it matters
Without measurement, every change is believed to have worked and the business accumulates unfounded convictions.
You have a problem here if
You cannot say whether last quarter's marketing change helped.
What to automate
Automate before-and-after measurement with a defined metric and window agreed in advance. Define success before you start — deciding afterwards is how every change comes to look successful.
21.11

Decision-making using evidence

Time7/10Financial9/10Automation7/10
What this is
Whether decisions actually use the evidence available.
Why it matters
Nine out of ten financially. Data that exists but does not change decisions is a cost with no return, and this is a very common state.
You have a problem here if
Reports are produced and decisions are still made on instinct.
What to automate
Seven out of ten — partly a process problem. Put the relevant data into the meeting where the decision is made, in advance, automatically. The habit of asking "what does the data say?" is cultural, but the answer being to hand is systemic.
21.12

Single source of truth

Time9/10Financial8/10Automation10/10
What this is
One agreed place where each important number lives.
Why it matters
Nine for time, ten for automation. Competing versions of the truth waste time in reconciliation and, worse, undermine confidence in all the numbers including the correct ones.
You have a problem here if
Meetings begin by arguing about whose figure is right.
What to automate
Designate the source system for each domain, integrate rather than duplicate, and generate every report from those sources. This is an architectural decision worth making explicitly and early.

Category totals

Time 102/120 · Financial 95/120 · Automation 112/120. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.