In an earlier blog we covered the topic of pushing information down to customers through downstream reporting. Now we’re going to think about pushing information up to franchisers, parent companies, and other people who are not necessarily on the front lines but require information from multiple sources to make strategic decisions. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Core Financial Disciplines to Track in Your Company
In previous blog posts I’ve written about why an Executive Support System (ESS) is important in helping CEOs to make forward-thinking decisions. I’ve also explored some of the detailed metrics and ratios that an ESS tracks, like the three types of profitability metrics.
Now I’d like to give a quick overview of the four core financial disciplines that every CEO should be monitoring in their companies. Read the rest of this entry »
Why CEOs Should Pay Greater Attention to Financial Metrics
When I started an IT services company, I was an IT expert but not necessarily an accounting expert. I was so busy working with my partners to get the company up and running that I didn’t have the time or interest to dig down and get deep into the financials.
Just starting out as the CEO, I remember managing the company’s financial standing by looking at basic monthly accounting reports like balance sheets, income statements and profit and loss statements. Financial metrics seemed pretty black and white to me at the time, and as long as the monthly reports looked good and there was money coming in, I thought we were in good shape.
It didn’t take me too long to realize that I wasn’t getting the whole picture. I soon recognized that those monthly reports were really just snapshots in time and did not reveal any important trends or insight into the future health of the business. Read the rest of this entry »
Using Color in Data Visualization
Andrew and I spent three days last week at a workshop on Data Visualization. It was given by Stephen Few of Perceptual Edge. Stephen is a recognized expert in the design of information displays and he definitely earns that recognition. I would highly recommend to anyone who has job responsibilities of communicating any kind of data to others to take this course or, at a minimum, purchase his books. It is more than worth it to hear what he has to say about the topic and I can almost guarantee that it will change the way you do this.
There were many “Aha” moments for me over the three days, but one in particular really stood out. That was where he spoke about using color in data visualization. Read the rest of this entry »
UI is hard
I assume that a lot of the people that are reading this blog know that we are developing a new service around data visualization for small and medium sized businesses. It’s really exciting for us. Especially because, as a lot of you know, I recently exited a company and this is a product that I really wish I would have had. It would have made a big difference in a lot of my decision making. But that’s not what this post is about. This is about designing a user interface (UI). And it’s really hard. Read the rest of this entry »
Using Charts Like a Lamp-posts
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts…for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912) Scottish poet, novelist and literary critic
It isn’t new. Statistics and graphics don’t have to mean anything or even offer any real information. Often, charts are there for the sole purpose of eliciting an emotion. The party doing the presenting doesn’t always want to relay information. They want to relay a feeling. It can be a “Look, things have been tough but they are really looking up” type of chart or it can be a “we need to prepare for a significant downturn and the rest of my presentation will show how we are going to do that” chart. Since approximately 60-65% of people are visual learners (wikipedia), charts and graphs are uniquely suited to setting the stage for a presentation. If you are one of the nearly 2/3 people that are visually orientated, starting a presentation with a startling graphic will set you in the mood for the rest of the presentation and offers the presenter a much better chance of swaying you to their way of thinking. Read the rest of this entry »