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Building an agency is hard. When the sun is shining, everyone seems to be making hay. But when times are not as obvious, sound and fundamental financial management is essential. There are so many moving parts, literally and figuratively. Your financials (both historical and projected) are just a representation of the decisions that you make or intend to make. If they are sloppy, well….you the get the point. Companies that build enduring equity value and achieve the kind of breakout freedom that the owner desires have a commitment to approaching their back office finances as a well running machine.
How well is your machine running? We created the Powermeter for Agencies to be a guide for owners to assess how well they are processing, accessing and using financial data to be the most confident business leaders they can be. There are four states on the Powermeter as follows:
When you are Passive, you don’t have data to make decisions so you are driven primarily by your gut.
When you are Perceptive, you have sense of what you need but don’t have the systems for reliable delivery.
When you are Proficient, you have core data dashboards and your team is starting to use the data for strategic discussions.
When you are Powerful, you are working on your business, feeling confident and informed in the data at a customer level and management is sufficiently empowered.
The cost of being low on the Powermeter scale reveals itself in growth, culture, cash flow, and confidence.
The Powermeter tells you how well you are using financial data to make better business decisions
People
When your team is empowered with data, you get leverage and scale. You will find this when you’re in a state of Proficient or Powerful.
Process
Process is about ensuring there’s no single point of failure. Your financial systems must run smoothly even if you’re not there or you lose a member of your accounting team.
Technology
Systems that can extract and present actionable data around customer profitability, utilization, and profit margin will give you power and confidence.