26Point Checklist

The framework · Direction

03 Market & Industry Position

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

Time4.3/10Financial6.9/10Automation7.1/10

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.

3.1

Market size and opportunity

Time4/10Financial7/10Automation7/10
What this is
How large the addressable market actually is for what you sell, where you sell it.
Why it matters
Sets the ceiling on everything else. Businesses regularly invest in growth machinery for a market that is already close to saturated for them, or under-invest in one with years of headroom.
You have a problem here if
You have never estimated how many potential buyers exist in your area or category.
What to automate
Automate the data assembly — industry statistics, census and business-registry counts, platform search volumes — into a refreshed estimate rather than a one-off spreadsheet somebody built in 2023. The interpretation stays yours.
3.2

Market growth and direction

Time4/10Financial7/10Automation7/10
What this is
Whether your market is expanding, flat or contracting, and how fast.
Why it matters
A flat market punishes the same strategy that a growing one rewards. Direction of travel changes whether you should be investing in share or in margin.
You have a problem here if
Your plan assumes growth without any external evidence that the market is growing.
What to automate
Set up a standing monitor: industry association data, official statistics releases, search-demand trends, and job-posting volume in your sector, summarised monthly. This is exactly the kind of tedious, repeatable scanning software should do.
3.3

Customer/industry trends

Time5/10Financial7/10Automation8/10
What this is
What is changing in how your customers buy, what they expect, and what they will tolerate.
Why it matters
Trend blindness is slow and then sudden. The businesses hurt worst are usually the ones whose customers changed gradually while their offer did not.
You have a problem here if
Objections you never used to hear are becoming common, and nobody has written them down.
What to automate
High automation value. Feed review sites, support tickets, lost-deal reasons and industry publications into a monthly synthesis. A language model reading twelve months of your own support inbox will tell you what is changing faster than any external report.
3.4

Competitor landscape

Time5/10Financial7/10Automation8/10
What this is
Who you actually compete against — including the ones the customer considers that you do not.
Why it matters
Most businesses track two or three named rivals and miss the substitutes and new entrants that are actually taking the deals.
You have a problem here if
You lose deals to companies you had not heard of.
What to automate
Automate ongoing capture of competitor pricing, offers, hiring, and review sentiment, plus a standing question in your lost-deal process asking who won. The list should maintain itself; you should only be reading the summary.
3.5

Competitive position

Time4/10Financial7/10Automation6/10
What this is
Your realistic standing in that field — share, reputation, and where you win and lose.
Why it matters
A clear view of position prevents both overreach and timidity. It is also what tells you whether growth must come from share or from the market itself.
You have a problem here if
You cannot say what proportion of the deals you bid for you win, or against whom.
What to automate
Track win rate by competitor and by segment automatically from the CRM. The number is usually available already and almost never looked at.
3.6

Alternative/substitute solutions

Time4/10Financial6/10Automation7/10
What this is
The other ways a customer could solve the problem — including doing nothing, or doing it in-house.
Why it matters
For most small businesses, the biggest competitor is inaction. Positioning against a rival when you are actually losing to "not yet" wastes the entire marketing budget.
You have a problem here if
Deals stall indefinitely rather than being lost to a named competitor.
What to automate
Instrument the pipeline so "no decision" is recorded as its own outcome rather than being left open forever. Automated stalled-deal reporting reveals the substitute you are actually losing to.
3.7

Regulatory environment

Time4/10Financial7/10Automation6/10
What this is
The rules, licences, standards and obligations that govern how you can operate.
Why it matters
Regulation is asymmetric: compliance is a cost, non-compliance is occasionally fatal. Changes rarely arrive with a warning addressed to you personally.
You have a problem here if
Nobody in the business is responsible for knowing when the rules change.
What to automate
Subscribe to and monitor the relevant regulator and industry feeds, with alerts routed to a named person. Automate the watch and the register of obligations; keep human judgement for interpretation, and take advice where the stakes justify it.
3.8

Economic exposure

Time4/10Financial6/10Automation7/10
What this is
How exposed the business is to interest rates, input costs, exchange rates, local employment and general conditions.
Why it matters
Exposure you have not named is exposure you cannot hedge. Two businesses with identical revenue can have wildly different fragility to the same downturn.
You have a problem here if
A 20% drop in demand or a 20% rise in input costs has never been modelled.
What to automate
Build the sensitivity model once, then feed it live cost and revenue data so the scenario refreshes itself. Automated early-warning thresholds on your key inputs are cheap and rarely implemented.
3.9

Emerging opportunities and threats

Time5/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
The specific openings and hazards visible right now that the business has not yet acted on.
Why it matters
This is where market awareness converts into money. Categories 3.1–3.8 are inputs; this is the output, and it decays if it is not reviewed on a cadence.
You have a problem here if
Opportunities are discussed and then lost because no one owns the list.
What to automate
Maintain a standing opportunity-and-threat register fed by the monitors above, reviewed at a fixed cadence, with each item either resourced or explicitly dropped. Automate the gathering and the reminder; keep the decision human.

Category totals

Time 39/90 · Financial 62/90 · Automation 64/90. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.