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Is information your friend? Your best friend?

I would suggest the biggest issue in business today is a lack of information around your business and area of responsibility.  Effectively even after a few years of this very different and challenging trading time, we still only have C+ rated information systems in most businesses. Information systems cover hard data and also the softer side of business. I am sure that almost every company out there would say, hand on heart “yes we could still do with a better understanding of our business”! Understanding is based on information - hard cold past, current or future facts do not lie.

The aim of being armed with information about your business is to ensure no surprises and to be able to react yesterday, not tomorrow. Usually most “bad stuff” that happens in business or our areas of responsibility could have been avoided with a proper information system in place – the bad news might have happened but because you knew about the pending bad news sooner than later, you could react earlier and mitigate some of the impact of it. Effectively it is about being more proactive.

So my challenge to you is what information in your business do you not know enough on? What information do you wish you knew but cannot get – how can you get that information? What current information do you get that you are not making the most of, so you could be more proactive with what that information is telling you and make decisions right now to maximise your profitability!

Most of our business issues happen due to things that we can and should control but do not! Yes of course there are external factors that impact us however business goes on so you need to control the areas that you can control (and reality that is probably like 90% + of what happens in your business). Make information your friend and watch issues be proactively known of sooner and the issue be 'beaten' that much sooner as a result...

If you would like any advice about what 'extra value adding' information your busiess should be reporting, you know who to call!

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