What are the challenges of business management?

December 12, 2023

If the term pilot is used to refer to an aircraft as well as a company, it is because several aspects bring them together.

The airplane pilot needs key indicators to lead both his machine and his crew to a specific destination: just like the company manager.

Without excellent visibility and a well-defined goal, it is impossible to guide your organization and team towards growth. Business management is ultimately the combination of these two elements in order to achieve a precise and ambitious objective.

In this article, we help you understand the strategic challenges of business management and how to implement it within your company.

What is business management?

Business management: definition

Business management is a strategic management method that consists of collecting, processing and analyzing information to help decision-making.

This data is used to monitor the smooth running of activities and to define key actions that accompany the company's overall strategy.

Questions:

Business management has several strategic objectives to align operational actions with the company's overall growth strategy .

It makes it possible to maximize performance by identifying key processes and optimizing them, to facilitate decision-making thanks to the use of dashboards where reliable indicators are grouped together, but also to anticipate risks in order to better adapt to market developments, and potential changes taking place internally.

Why is business management strategic?

Activity management is strategic insofar as it allows the company to be led in a certain direction.

A response to objectives

While business management helps managers to obtain a global vision thanks to elaborate dashboards, it is above all determined on the basis of precise objectives.

These must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound, in other words: SMART objectives.

Realistic projections

Business management differs from traditional day-to-day management by its general and strategic dimension. Indeed, its implementation requires alignment with the company's vision and long-term objectives.

In this sense, it involves realistic estimates and simulations, made possible by optimized resource management.

A three-dimensional role

This strategic management method also meets other needs.

Anticipating risks

By providing a detailed analysis of ongoing activities, business management allows the identification of risks that could threaten the growth of the company. These must lead to the development of a risk management plan to deal with them.

Improving operations and detecting underperformance

Meticulously executed business management makes it possible to clearly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the company. Indeed, the management team then has enough information to identify underperformance and areas for improvement that will optimize the business.

The affirmation of leadership

Informed leadership is effective and credible leadership.

Business management will help to gain in reliability and accuracy, thus contributing to strategic and coherent decision-making. This will strengthen trust in leadership.

Step 1: Measure performance

It is impossible to establish an effective business management strategy without an accurate measurement of the situation.

The data must be as exhaustive as possible in order to reflect reality as closely as possible, especially on topics such as internal and external planning, purchases and expenses, time achieved or imminent business opportunities.

This visibility gained on your company's activities allows you to implement concrete actions. Data processing and analysis are crucial steps to remain flexible and responsive.

Tracking, measuring, and analyzing allow you to compare expected and actual results. Identifying gaps between forecasts and reality helps you make adjustments, whether they relate to your goals or your resources.

Examples of performance measurement with Stafiz:

*Vision at the landing of projects: what will be the margin at the end of the project?*

*Production report: what is the monthly and cumulative production?*

Step 2: Anticipate the results

To manage a company, anticipation is essential.

The objective is to assume the most realistic results possible, while taking into account any changes in the market in which you operate. Careful monitoring of your sector will help you anticipate any threat.

Although this anticipation step is based on an analysis of past results, you cannot rely solely on this history. Your in-depth knowledge of the market will prove to be of great value in anticipating the future.

Here's how your results in Stafiz:

*Forecasting: what is the future capacity? Which profiles will be missing in the future ( resource capacity planning)?*

*Anticipate projected turnover. Analyze from different perspectives: entities, teams, with opportunities, and more.*

Step 3: Simulate each situation

The simulation stage completes the anticipation. Setting up scenarios is a way of materializing the consequences of your decisions. Accurate budget monitoring will help you anticipate possible deviations.

You will be able to adjust your business management strategy, and in particular the allocation of resources, both from a human and financial point of view.

Use all the tools at your disposal. Software that includes business intelligence will provide you with relatively consistent and realistic predictions based on your past results. However, keep in mind that these are not absolute truths but predictions.

Step 4: Respond proactively

The anticipations and simulations carried out previously will help to provide you with the necessary foundation to adapt your strategy or your project governance.

Plan your change of direction:

Identify the elements to be adjusted that will allow you to be as close as possible to your estimates;
test and iterate;
Prioritize in order of importance.

Responsiveness and adaptability are essential here.

Which software for business management should you choose?

For reporting and dashboards

Reporting and the creation of well-constructed dashboards are essential for business management and are effective project management tools.

The difference between reporting and dashboard

Reporting consists of processing and collecting data. It appears raw, without interpretation, decontextualized.

To be relevant, this data must be structured and shaped in order to be a lever for decision-making. Any information taken out of context could lead to misinterpretation and inconsistent decision-making.

Choosing the right KPIs

The choice of project management KPIs – also known as key performance indicators – is strategic.

The margin rate, the absenteeism rate, the number of sales or the number of recruitments are examples.

This step is crucial and must be considered carefully. Beware of vanity metrics, these flattering indicators do not always reflect the performance and reality of the company.

In addition, be aware that the KPIs to study can vary from one company to another. Indeed, they depend on the stage of development and the objectives to be achieved.

Building effective performance measurement tools

Ideally, building dashboards involves the entire company. Each department should be able to share key data to gain visibility on the ground reality.

Creating project management dashboards can be a tedious project, but the rewards are well worth the investment of time. Relevant relevant dashboards will give you access to clear clear, concise information to help you make decisions in both the short and long term.

In addition, Stafiz is a partner of choice for the implementation of business management. The different views offered allow a synthetic view of all the essential data for the strategic management of a company :of the resource planning, schedules, project cost monitoring, and activity management.

ERP-type management software

While ERP systems are essential allies in the implementation of activity management, they ultimately serve the entire organization. Indeed, all departments and hierarchical levels will benefit from this 360-degree vision providing reliable and real-time aggregated data.

This will also prove to be particularly useful during the anticipation and simulation stages, thus allowing realistic estimates.

For decision-makers, ERP is a strategic tool that provides visibility into the company's activity and its growth potential. Any ERP integration or migration project therefore deserves special attention as it represents an essential tool in business management.

Business Intelligence tools

Business Intelligence integrated into a number of software programs will complement the tools mentioned above. Indeed, the latter will allow a more complete analysis of the data, allowing for more realistic forecasts, contextualized interpretations, and even suggestions for concrete actions.

Business management is based on data. The objective is to ensure the smooth running of activities while setting the direction to be taken. As a result, it is essential to have accurate numbers that you can rely on, structured in a way that saves you time in your decision-making. Thus, high-performance and scalable tools become essential.

The Stafiz management software has completely integrated this need for precision, ease of reading and flexibility. Years of consulting experience have helped identify the management needs of executives, and our product has been designed to meet these requirements.

Our goal is to provide you with all the visibility you need, as easily as possible, to help you make informed decisions and support your growth.

Stafiz's analysis tools allow you to understand the reasons for over-performance or under-performance. Here are some examples:

*Analysis of the gaps between the initial plan and reality – Analysis by type profiles*