Ready for your Mid-year Review?

Well, it’s that time of year for business owners to consider doing a Mid-Year review.

What is a Mid-year review? It’s stopping to catch your breath long enough and taking an objective look at your business – how the first half of the year was and how you expect the second of the year to be. A mini Strategic Planning session, if you will.

A Mid-year review involves looking at all aspects of your business including:

• Financial results – How did they compare against budget? How are your ratios and KPI’s vs. expected results? Most importantly, how is you Cash Flow?
• HR – When was the last employee survey taken? Are your employees working well together? Is turnover at an acceptable level?
• Sales & marketing – Has revenue met your expectations? Have you identified why variances exist? Is your revenue mix in line with your goals or should you make some modifications to your marketing efforts to focus on higher ROI products/services?
• Operations – Are your products/services being delivered timely? Have your margins changed/costs increased (i.e. service & installation costs)? Have quality or customer satisfaction changed?

Lisa Wood from New Sprout Media asked the quintessential question in her blog – Are you on track?

You have goals, right? How well are you doing relative to your goals? I can’t think of a better way to frame the reason to do a Mid-year review.

According to John McAdam in his article on this subject, a Mid-year review includes the following:

• Evaluate performance
• Reallocate resources to better achieve goals.
• Make more money than you would have otherwise.
• Take stronger corrective actions than you would have without a mid-year review.
• Provide leadership for your team—too much silence taxes milestone goals.
• Offer focus for your team.

John points out that taking time to do this is essential and, I would add, one of the most rewarding and enlightening strategic exercises you can do for your company.

Daniel Dreher points out in his article that you can achieve better focus and reap the following benefits:

• Reviewing now provides more time to implement changes.
• You can act while other businesses are procrastinating.
• You probably have a good idea of how the year is going.
• A review offers an opportunity to re-grip the reins.
• Nothing good comes from waiting for more numbers.
• Opportunities may exist now that will disappear later.
• There’s no better time to re-energize employees.

Daniel adds that this exercise will help you focus and put your company in a better position going forward.

One critical item I’ll add is don’t forget the What, Who, Where, When, Why and How questions.

As with any exercise in planning, make sure you plan the discussion/meeting upfront and allow sufficient time and input to have a great result. Contact me, Andrew Tucker, for help with this process or other aspects of your business. I can be reached by e-mail at andrew@aetuckerconsulting.com or by phone at 704-651-2216.

Tags: CFO, business tips, Chief Financial Officer