The purpose of the Business Scan Assessment (BSA) is to aid in the evaluation of existing processes, results, team engagement and business levers to determine the overall health of your company.

This review will reveal where your business is functioning well and identify areas where there may be a need for additional focus to improve approaches or take maximum advantage of great strengths.

NOTE: Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.

Completing the BSA will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes. There are no correct or incorrect answers, simply answer each question based on your knowledge and experience with the business.

Using the "Save and Continue" button lets you may stop and come back to the assessment at any point as many times as needed. All your prior input will be retained.

Any information obtained is confidential and will not be disclosed to anyone other than you without your permission.

The BSA addresses the top seven benchmark factors identified by business owners and executives as critical to ongoing success and growth. These factors are:

1. Clarity and Focus
2. People and Team
3. Time and Productivity
4. Strategic Planning
5. Sales and Marketing
6. Management Excellence
7. Exit and Succession Planning

At the conclusion of the core sections, there is a final section for capturing your thoughts and Comments.

LET'S BEGIN! CLICK ON THE BLUE BUTTON BELOW

SECTION 1 – CLARITY AND FOCUS

1. Clarity - Clarity of purpose, a strategic vision and planning are hallmarks of a well-lead business. Leaders understand how to balance the desire for control without planning further into the future than one can reasonably see.

They believe that by focusing the talent and resources on accomplishing specific tasks that moves the company toward achieving its goals is essential.  One must also include a robust feedback mechanism that offers early warning when key objectives are not progressing as expected thus allowing for time to take appropriate steps to adjust.

Best Practice – We have a formal planning process that clearly communicates the vision and goals to all team members in a way that gives each employee an understanding of how their work contributes to overall company’s success. The planning process is tiered from long-range aspirations to 5- and 3-year aspirations to one-year goals. The one-year goals are broken down into quarterly objectives. These, in turn, are further broken down within each area of the company into individual annual and quarterly objectives.

Those quarterly objectives should be composed of no more than 3 to 5 objectives that must be accomplished with one “stretch” goal that, if accomplished, would have a significant impact. Each quarterly objective is then broken down into 3 to 5 key objectives against which progress is monitored monthly.

Each of the monthly and quarterly objectives have been written to be unambiguous and measurable, so it is clear to all when an objective has been completed or not.

Select the degree that best represents how well your business meets the best practice ideal.

2. Focus  -  For each of the following, indicate the degree to which you have formalized the following Best Practices:   Values – We have written values, virtues, qualities and traits that are most important to us and how they relate to our business.

• Vision – We have written a description of what our company and our career/life would look like five years from now.
• Mission – We have written out how we plan to achieve our vision while staying true to our values.
• Purpose – We have a written statement of our purpose for creating our business that is significant, focuses on how our business serves a greater purpose and is inspiring.

SECTION 2 – PEOPLE AND TEAM

3. Leadership  -  Best Practice – We have experienced leaders in all key positions with a plan to identify and intentionally develop emerging managers.

Leaders have been selected based on not just achievement but on their capacity to lead, inspire and develop those under them to be more than they ever imagined and to accomplish things they never thought they could.

4. Employee and Management Development  -  Best Practice – We invest in developing the leadership and management skills of our employees. We use assessment tools to identify areas for improvement and use programs that deliver lasting change in skills and behavior.

A regular plan for skill and leadership and communications enhancement is in place.

5. Communications Skills  -  Best Practice – A system for understanding and maximizing the inherent synergies of personality differences has been embraced by the team.

Managers and executives all understand different communication styles and know how to adapt their communication style to others for clarity and understanding.

Communication is healthy and conflicts are resolved easily as team members adapt to the behavioral style of other team members.

6. Culture of Personal Improvement and Development  - People leave managers, not companies. Bad managers can demoralize the highest skilled and best performers faster than anyone. These stars quickly start looking elsewhere when the approach to productivity is not right because of the learning environment and management. Morale, effectiveness, and efficiency suffer as personnel issues reoccur.

Best Practice – Managers, especially new and mid-level managers, have participated in a mentoring and developmental program that has helped them develop good skills and approaches to leadership and management. They understand people and how to best motivate them through a coaching and collaborative approach.

Managers and executives all understand different communication styles and know how to adapt their communication style to others for clarity and understanding.

Every manager is actively "coaching" subordinate team members on how to execute their responsibilities. New team members are systematically "apprenticed" by managers and a strong training and development culture exists in the business.

7. Culture of Extreme Ownership  - Best Practice – A culture of taking ownership of goals, issues or problems exists throughout the company.

Everyone in the company is accountable to each other for meeting goals, fixing customer problems, resolving situations. Employees are proactive, not reactive and strive for excellence.

8. Meeting Effectiveness  - Best Practice – Meetings are highly productive with issues decided with little wasted time. Participants know in advance what is to be discussed and decided, come prepared to discuss the issues in depth.

The meeting leader knows how to respond and manage the many ways individuals can sabotage progress or process and guide participants back on track. Action items are recorded and reported.

SECTION 3 - TIME AND PRODUCTIVITY

9. Time Management  - Best Practice – Every manager operates according to a daily calendar and they prioritize their activities based on high importance items first and less important items second.

10. Organizational Plan  - Best Practice – Everyone on the team knows their role and sphere of authority and work moves smoothly through the business. The business is organized to give clear, unambiguous authority and responsibility at every level.

Decisions are made at the lowest possible level so only a few outlier situations must be handled by next level management. Managers carefully monitor the system of workflow in the organization.

Organizational charts and clear job descriptions are regularly updated to make sure the requirements for a job are well understood and documented to help ensure hiring the right person into a position.

Responsibilities and authorities are regularly updated to reflect business realities.

11. Operations and Training Processes and Procedures Manual  - Best Practice – The Operations and Training Manual is current and revised on a semi-annual basis at minimum. A process is in place to continually improve effectiveness and capture new learning.

Team members refer to the manual regularly for information on how to execute their responsibilities.

12. A Culture of Continual Improvement - Best Practice – All team members are rallied around a commitment to eliminate wasted time, movement, and materials, to continually improve efficiency, cut production costs, and compete more effectively. Focus is on high productivity.

Employees are encouraged to find better, more efficient and effective ways of doing things and eliminate duplicated effort and ideas are regularly solicited from employees and put into place and documented. Those involved in suggesting improvements are recognized and appreciated.

13. Performance Improvement Plan - Best Practice – Every team member is assigned an incentive package that motivates them to work as hard as possible.

As far into the future is possible, a blend of base and at-risk pay is used to incentivize commitment, and creativity and team members care about the business as if it were their own.

SECTION 4- STRATEGIC PLANNING

14. Business Life Cycle Every business has a life cycle from startup to growth, to decline through either reinvention or termination. Knowing where your company is along this life cycle helps inform you of the issues you face at each stage of growth and insights into what you need to address so your business remains evergreen.

Each division and even product or service a company has also has a life cycle. Looking at each of these and assessing where each is in the life cycle will help your planning anticipate and address the issues that are or soon will be faced.

There are four inflection points in a company’s growth, they are:

Start-Up: The entrepreneur and perhaps a partner or two start the company; the focus is on finding enough customers to keep the doors open, survival and understanding the industry and adjusting the business model for success.

Growth: Growth begins to occur and the business may experience explosive growth in sales. There is a correspondingly rapid growth in people. Management is being stretched, may feel some loss of control and visibility. Business processes and procedures are not well established. The organization can quickly change direction and be responsive to customers and opportunities. It becomes increasingly clear that new ways of leading, managing and communicating must be substantially improved.

Maturity: The company is established and is experiencing steady, if slower growing, sales. Increasing sales is more incremental than a breakthrough. People know their jobs and things are on cruise control. Agility and the ability to respond to customers or developments become more difficult. The company acquires other firms to grow.

Decline or Rebirth & Reinvention: At some point, the comparative advantage the company has begins to erode as new solutions and new competitors enter the market. A decline occurs and absent a reinvention and revitalization, the outcome will be eventual termination. Owners need will need to make decisions about the future of the company.

Where is your company along this continuum?

15. A Strategic Planning Process and Assessment of Both Opportunities and Weaknesses Is Completed At Least Annually - A recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of nearly 800 executives revealed that just 45 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the strategic-planning process. Moreover, only 23 percent indicated that major strategic decisions were made within its confines.

The frustrations come from lack of a defined and orderly way to effectively and efficiently go from reviewing what we did this year to defining what we want to do next year which is why having a well developed and orderly process for doing a strategic plan is essential.

It begins with strategic thinking, having a process for turning major trends, customer insights, competitive analysis, areas of opportunity and comparative advantage of the company and business constraints into a coherent strategy. The SWOT assessment is a key part of a company’s strategic planning process and identifies the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats so the business has a very clear idea of where the business has:

(Strengths) An advantage in the marketplace. Characteristics that put the business in a position of disadvantage relative to competitors.

(Opportunities) Market and environmental opportunities that the company can exploit.

(Weaknesses) External factors that are outside the control of the business that can significantly imperil for the business.

(Threats) When combined with strategic thinking with what the SWOT reveals to create a plan for the next year that has executable and measurable objectives that will bring it about.

Best Practice – You have an annual meeting where you and your leaders consider the major trends, customer insights, competition, comparative advantages, and business constraints and come to a common view of what the business must do over the next year with a look ahead three years out.

All come prepared with their own assessments and information for their areas of responsibility and their perspective on the business.

Outcomes from meetings are taken back and the resources and impacts determined so what the sales, financial, personnel, and other impacts will be. This information is taken up in one or more subsequent meetings a realistic, impactful and achievable strategy emerges.

Semi-annually you revisit your strategic plan and make any mid-year correction needed.

16. Financial Plan - A written strategic financial plan setting the annual and quarterly/and or monthly financial targets, that is monitored weekly with significant variances highlighted.

Monthly, a review of the actual vs. plan is held so any needed intervention may take place early.

Best Practice - A written financial plan with annual and quarterly/monthly financial targets, is monitored weekly and formally reviewed by managers minimum of on a quarterly basis.

Major projects are modeled for cash flow, financial impact and profitability before committing.

SECTION 5 - SALES AND MARKETING

17. Strategic Marketing Plan - Best Practice – You have a formal process that transforms quantitative business objectives into marketing priorities and strategies.

Priorities are the key objectives and measurable results identify how well each objective has been met. High-level objectives are included in KPIs at each level.

Strategies are translated into actionable plans through the key objectives and budgets are set based on company objectives and available funding.

18. Tactical Marketing Plan to Accomplish Key Objectives

Best Practice – Managers have developed an aggressive, measurable marketing plan to produce a predictable number of leads, improve conversion rates, increase the average revenue per transaction, and increase the transactions per customer so profits increase exponentially.

Results of the marketing plan are being measured and used to improve your marketing tactics at least twice a month.

19. Consistent Look and Messaging

Best Practice – You have established brand standards for your logo, colors and how your business is described.

You have a modern and responsive website that showcases who you are, the benefits you deliver and the problems you solve. Your written communications reflect what your website shows.

You have a strong differentiation from others in your industry and your sales and customer-facing teams can articulate what makes you the best solution.

20. Sales Recruiting, Management and Training

Best Practice – You have a strong sales team who understand professional selling and their skills are regularly upgraded and improve with sales training that changes long term behavior and results.

Your sales manager has had specialized training in managing a sales force and his/her skills and understanding are upgraded with periodic training.

You use personnel assessments designed specifically to identify the best sales candidates to hire, discover what motivates them and determines what areas of sales they may be weak in so appropriate training and education may be undertaken.

You have established quotas and a sales compensation plan that motivates behavior needed for continued business success.

21. Sales Management System

Best Practice – The sales force has a well-tested, carefully scripted sales process and their activity is coordinated with an appropriate CRM software solution which measures and reports conversion rates and results weekly.

Existing clients are nurtured for more wallet share. Salesforce compensation is based on sales results achieved.

SECTION 6 - MANAGEMENT EXCELLENCE

22. Key Performance Results (KPR)

Best Practice – The 5 to 10 most important numbers indicating the performance of the business at each level of responsibility has been identified as KPRs and are systematically measured and reported on a daily or weekly basis.

Each division and some departments have individual KPRs that are regularly reported and monitored.

Every team member knows which numbers are being used to measure their individual performance.

23. KPR Dashboard

Best Practice – The Key Performance Results and are systematically measured and reported on a daily or weekly basis for each responsible manager.

This information is available and reviewed daily or weekly by owners, top management and line managers. The system presents the information in easy to interpret visual graphics with problem made visually obvious.

SECTION 7 - BUSINESS VALUATION, EXIT AND SUCCESSION PLAN

24. Key Employees Who Are Essential to Business Operations Have a Suitable Backup and No Situation Exists That Could Severely Impact Company Viability

Best Practice – The Key Performance Results and are systematically measured and reported on a daily or weekly basis for each responsible manager.

The company has no one person, piece of equipment or exposure that, should the worst happen, would sink the company. Examples would be only one key salesperson responsible for more than 20% of sales. Or, an owner who, were they incapacitated, would leave the company floundering.

No one customer represents more than 15% of total sales.

25. A Succession Plan Is in Place and Key People Are Being Actively Groomed

Best Practice – A formal succession plan has been created for each key employee and role in the company.

A successor has been identified as having the capability to one day step into the role. An active development plan has been designed to five the person ever greater exposure to the role they will fill and practice in carrying out those responsibilities.

As far as practical, key employees are cross trained in other positions.

26. Formal Exit Planning and Strategy is Being Done

Best Practice – A formal succession plan has been created for each key employee and role in the company.

You are working with your strategic financial advisors and legal team and have developed a plan that will allow you to exit the business and maximizing the value to stockholders.

In closely held companies, appropriate plans have been made to enable an orderly and tax-advantaged ownership transfer.

SECTION 8 - IMPACT RATING FACTORS

Now that you have evaluated each of the ey factors of your business, how would you rank each of the Sections in terms of being critical to the success of your business?