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In 1969, it took the Apollo 11 three days, three hours and 49 minutes to reach the moon. To reach their goal, the flight crews weren’t idly bobbing around in space - they were constantly monitoring every aspect of their flight’s progress. Whenever anything was amiss, they corrected it. For the mission to be successful, the entire trip was a constant process of check and correct, check and correct.

And just like the astronauts of the Apollo 11 Mission, a constant process of checking and correcting your KPIs can help you accomplish your business goals – in a realistic timeframe.

KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are one of the most common and effective tools used to check a business’s progress. It’s a simple concept – KPIs should be quantifiable measurements, agreed to and set at certain points in the year, to help reflect the critical success factors of an organisation.   After all, what you can measure, you can manage.

But once you have strong Key Performance Indicators defined, what do you do with them?

The power of KPIs really comes in to play when they are constantly reviewed to help adapt your strategy to improve results.  Effective KPIs will help you measure where your business stands at any given moment (CHECK) and help you adapt your strategy to improve your results instantaneously (CORRECT). 

Embracing the Check and Correct Mindset will allow you to create other valuable data by assessing all aspects of your business from human resources, finance and customer care. Maybe you review your current pricing, devise tax minimisation strategies, or quantify the work load on individual team members – allowing you to correct a situation rather than letting time slip by and the problem accumulate.  Regular auditing of KPI’s are also a great way for you and your team to communicate with each other and share goals for the business, as well as making sure you’re heading in the same direction.

Successful businesses assess KPIs often, to make sure goals are being achieved, and where you need to focus your energies. The goals for KPIs may also change as the organisation's goals change, or as it gets closer to achieving a goal.

So when’s the ideal time to set KPIs? For most businesses it’s around tax time, but the benefits of taking action at regular intervals for small business can be significant - rather than once a year when your accountant tells you there’s no cashflow.

KPIs can help your team get a clear picture of what’s important, but also what they need to make it happen… Take action when action is required!

Anna Kyriacou runs AKA Group www.akagroup.com.au - Accountants Advisors Mentors and is a Business Chicks member. You can connect with her here.

Edited by Penny Newton