Managing4Results Managing Your Business For Peak Performance
Whether you have problems to fix or just looking to improve your business, the solution is the Small Business Scorecard.
About the Scorecard
The Scorecard consists of 93 factors divided into 10 main categories - 5 covering internal issues and 5 for external risks. The Scorecard user rates each factor using 2 criteria - 1) importance and 2) level of performance or risk. The dual rating of each factor automatically prioritizes them into action groups.
The life-threatening group gets attention first and so on down the line. In addition to locating problem areas, the Scorecard identifies each business's core, secondary, and potential strengths.
Developed by CPA
The Scorecard for Small Business was designed by David E. Coffman, a CPA who has 30 years of experience working exclusively with small businesses. He has been a student of business since his early teens. He has started dozens of businesses and has had at least one operating for most of his life.
Since 1997 he has specialized in business valuations. A critical procedure in a business valuation is analyzing the company being valued. Using his business knowledge and experience he developed a system to help focus this analysis. It contains 93 factors in 10 key areas. It combines two widely used business analysis tools - SWOT and Five Forces.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis has been around for a long time and is nothing new. There are lots of articles about it, but very little guidance on how to actually apply it to your business. Strengths and weaknesses refer to your internal competencies, while opportunities and threats concern external risks. Traditional how-to instructions tell you to take a piece of paper and draw one line vertically down the center and another line horizontally across the middle of the page to create four sections. Label the top left as strengths, bottom left as weaknesses, top right as opportunities, and bottom right as threats. Now think about your business and list what comes to mind in the most appropriate section. When you are done listing things, you rate each item by order of importance within each section. The idea is to address the top issues first.
Five Forces Analysis
In his books Competitive Advantage and Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter introduced the concept of the five forces of competition.
Some consider the Five Forces to be a refinement of SWOT analysis on the external (opportunities and threats) side. By assessing these forces, a company can more accurately determine its standing within its competitive environment (external risks).
The Problem
Both the SWOT and Five Forces methods are great tools to analyze any business. In fact they are widely used by researchers, consultants, and other professionals to do just that. In the real world they are difficult to use because they are so all encompassing. Where and how do you get started? Where should you focus? What issues should be considered? These are just a few of the unknowns encountered when trying to apply these methods. When faced with such ambiguity most of us tend to do nothing.
The Solution
The solution is simple. With the guidance and structure of the Small Business Scorecard anyone can easily and successfully apply these methods to analyze and evaluate a business.
The Scorecard vs. a Professional Business Analysis
If you get your business analyzed by a professional here is what you will receive. A thick report with a fancy binder. Inside the binder there will be spreadsheets and charts galore. Some will summarize your business financial statements. Others will show lots of ratio calculations. This data will be compared to industry data and also analyzed for historical trends.
This report will cost you hundreds of dollars. You will NOT get any answers. The report will NOT identify any specific problems and provide any solutions. In other words you just wasted a bunch of money.
The Scorecard costs $12.95 and will require you to spend several hours considering each and every factor. At the end you will categorize the results using the dual rating system. The categorized results will reveal which factors need to be addressed first. At the very least you will learn lots of useful information about your business. With our money back guarantee you have absolutely nothing to lose and a much better performing business to gain.
