Year-End Evaluation Tips

While traditional accounting gives us useful ways to evaluate a company’s performance, the numbers don’t always show the whole picture. As a business owner, it’s important to evaluate the successes and failures of your company in other ways apart from numerical values. This can be as simple as answering two questions: How well did your company perform this year? And what can you do better next year?

Evaluation Tips

First, determine what success looks like for your company. This may be a measure of success tailored to the specific year or an overall accomplishment. Revisit and reflect on these triumphs, then share with your team to motivate success in the upcoming year.

Evaluate the events that were unpredicted. Natural disasters, key manufacturers shutting down business, issues with a new client, or critical team members quitting their jobs, can leave your company unprepared. What did your company not foresee happening and how did your company react? These events can account for huge changes in your revenue, but they can also help you troubleshoot your business practices. Identify ways you handled calamity well and areas that could have been improved.

Measure customer satisfaction and determine key ways to improve. Examine your customer satisfaction surveys, ratings, and reviews. To validate the work that you’re doing is paying off, and to make sure your customers are loyal, it is important to evaluate customer satisfaction. This will help identify areas to improve and where to allocate more, or less, funds.

Here are ways to measure customer satisfaction:

• In-App Surveys, Post-Service Surveys, and Long Email Surveys.
• Customer Satisfaction Score – the scale typically ranges between 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10.
• The Net Promoter Score – measures the likeliness of a customer referring you to someone.
• Customer Effort Score – The effort it took your customer to have their issue solved — generally on a scale from 1 (very low effort) to 7 (very high effort). Your business can improve satisfaction by making the buying journey easier for your customer.
• Social Media Monitoring – it’s the perfect place to hear what your customers are really thinking about you. Monitor Facebook and Twitter, Google, Quora, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.

Measure the satisfaction of your employees. The happiness and satisfaction of your employees can impact the success of your company overall. Why is this important?

• Satisfied employees are more productive.
• Come to work more regularly.
• And are less likely to leave for another job.

Conduct a Competitive Analysis. A competitive analysis is a critical part of your company business plan in the upcoming year. With this evaluation, you can establish what makes your product or service unique–and therefore what attributes you play up to attract your target market. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competition–or potential competition–is critical to making sure your business survives and grows.

Conduct a Market Analysis. You should renew your market analysis at least every year. Markets change–a business needs to watch for changes in its market. Evaluate the market size, growth, current segmentation of customers, market trends etc.

It’s important to evaluate your company’s performance and the market as a whole, but it is more important to develop strategic ways to take this information and continuously improve in the upcoming year. For assistance, contact BDeWees Consulting today.