How Ballast Helps Companies Reach Their Goals
Are you a small business owner or operator that wants to see your company reach its full potential?
Ballast helps small business owners and operators drive their company to their full potential. Ballast is a management consulting firm that specializes in helping small businesses reach their goals by providing financial clarity and guidance. Our team of seasoned professionals have developed a plan for continuous improvement that has been very successful in helping clients reach greater growth potential and increase efficiency and profitability. Continue reading below to better understand how this works.
Step 1 - Understand the Client's Goals
The first step in Ballast’s plan for continuous improvement is to understand your goals as a business owner. The team at Ballast will sit down with your ownership and executive team and gain an understanding of what you are trying to achieve with your business. This includes any short-term or long-term goals as well as any obstacles the company may have faced in the past. This sets the framework for how we will view the business and build a plan. Good plans are built in the context of clear goals.
Step 2 - Clean and Organize Historical Financial Data
The next step is to clean and organize historical financial data in the accounting system for analysis and comparison against future projections. This data provides insight into what areas need improvement, where capital should be allocated, or which parts of the business should receive more intense scrutiny and focus. Good, clean, well organized financial data gives an accurate picture of what has been going on and serves as a base point from which changes can be measured moving forward. This step must be completed before financial plans can be built. This helps ensure that all decisions made are based on reliable, objective information rather than guesswork or intuition alone.
Step 3 - Build A Financial Plan
After obtaining an understanding of the client’s goals and cleaning up old data, it’s time to build a financial plan rooted in this historical data that shows the path towards achieving those goals. This includes projecting income and expenses over time, forecasting cash flow needs, calculating operational key performance indicators and financial health ratios, and providing clear, understandable summary outputs for your team. By having an organized financial plan, it makes it easier for you and your team to stay on track towards your desired outcome.
Step 4 - Monitor Performance Against Plan
Finally, it is important to regularly monitor performance against this financial plan so adjustments can be made if needed along the way in order to meet or exceed stated goals. In addition to monitoring performance against the plan itself, it is also important to make operational improvements where necessary so that processes become more efficient over time, which ultimately leads to greater profitability down the line. It’s essential that companies continuously improve in order to remain competitive within their markets, so tracking progress against objectives becomes even more vital as outside forces continue to shape how businesses operate today and into tomorrow.
Working with Ballast allows business owners access to experienced professionals who understand how best to manage finances and create plans for success tailored specifically for each individual client's needs. Not only does this service provide peace of mind knowing that someone else is handling accounting duties accurately but it also frees up valuable time allowing owners and executives more opportunities to focus on growth and improvement than managing finances day-to-day. Allowing Ballast to handle your financial planning needs ensures your company reaches its fullest potential while still giving you control over decision making every step of the way.
