5 Analytical tools to track your business progress

Every business has one primary target and that is success. Apart from the forerunning factors like revenues, profits and investments another important factor for success is feedback and progress analysis.

Tracking your progress makes you know where you are and what you need to know in order to achieve your ultimate targets.

All future decisions and plans depend upon feedback and analysis of on-going business operations.

With some right tools you can effectively create a whole system which provides you with important data regarding your business progress.

 

So, here are 5 tools to help you track your business better

 

 

1. Microsoft Excel

 

I include Excel in my list for the small entrepreneurs and family businesses who can use the immense potential it offers.

One can do all sorts of mathematical and statistical calculations on Excel through formulae and also create a dynamic environment through the Macros. Plus it has a lot of options and themes to represent the data so that it can be easily understood and interpreted like graphs, pie-charts etc. which can be transferred to power point presentations and elsewhere if required.

2. ERP systems

 

Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is a business management software which is usually a collection of integrated applications which the company and my point of focus that is you he businessman can use for various purposes of collecting, storing, managing and interpreting data from your various operations like

• Product Planning

• Cost Planning

• Marketing and sales

• Shipping and Logistics

•  Inventory Management etc.

Thus, it becomes a powerful tool for data interpretations and is used widely and exhaustively by all major and minor organizations. Therefore, het hold of an ERP provider now and manage your business better.

3. Actuarial Forecasting

 

For those of you who do not know what actuarial science it let me give a brief overview.

It is the practice of using current and past financial and fiscal data to make financial sense of the future.

You must be wondering then why haven’t you heard of it before. That is because it is one of the rarest professions in the world and actuaries are like football stars when it comes to finance. Earlier, they were mainly involved in the risk and reinsurance sector but lately in the past decade they have widened their gaze. More and more actuarial services now offer exhaustive forecasting models which predict the results of your current actions and decisions in the time to come. They are costly, yes, but they are worth consulting and they always work within the probability of 99% correct results! Wow.

 

Do you know that major market research and HR firms which also have risk and reinsurance services employ actuaries? These firms include Aon Hewitt, Mercer, Milliman and Towers Watson.

This is because when it comes to interpreting numbers, analysing them and predicting what’s about to come, they are the number one guys.

Now that you know this, you have an advantage. Most people do not even know who an actuary is or what actuarial science is. 99% of the people I have met in my life didn’t have a clue about it. So run fast, hire some actuarial help and know where exactly you are headed.

4. Microsoft Access

 

Access by Microsoft also has potential to manage small and medium scale businesses effectively.

Providing you with easy database management features and a whole lot of other tools to keep track of your business essentials, it is also very flexible as you can import and export relevant data from and to many other sources which may or may not be compatible within themselves.

 

Thus, Access makes the list just because of its simplicity and flexible design.

 

5. SAS

SAS or Statistical Analysis System, is a software suite, the most popular one albeit, for advanced analytics, business intelligence, data management and predictive analytics.

It has the largest chunk of the market when it comes to business analytics. I mean that everyone is using it. Corporates use it and so does the government. Actuaries use SAS exhaustively as it has built in features which make data analysis easy and produce exhaustive results.

SAS modules can be effectively coded to note consumer behaviour and observe and predict its patterns. The same can be done with other factors important to business.

 

The main feature which makes SAS so immensely popular that the structure is flexible as per the requirements of each kind of business. This means that if you know how to code, you can create your own modules which are built to do what you code them to do. These are then permanently saved and can be used at any time. Thus, this makes SAS the most sought after tool for analytics and a must have if you want to run an efficient and smooth business.

It is very essential for you as a businessman to keep track of key attributes of your business. So don’t just gamble about by accepting hunches and intuitions. Always be precise, informed and make well calculated discussions.