Without setting specific business goals, your company is like a ship without a rudder, moving aimlessly towards generic goals of sales and growth, but without any detailed plan of how to get there.
For example, you can ask your sales team to “get more sales this year than last,” what is a general goal, but not very detailed and unspecific about how many sales they actually need or when they need them.
Or you can tell your sales team that they need to hit $75,000 in sales every quarter, which is 10% more than last year and not out of reach. That they’ll receive a report monthly so they know where they stand and can ensure they’re on track to reach it.
The second goal is more likely to achieve the desired results because it’s detailed and incorporates the SMART methodology of goal setting, which stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time Based
If you have specific goals, you’re 10x more likely to achieve them.
Goal setting can take time and include multiple goals for various areas of your organization. They can include goals to expand your use of technology, sales growth goals, client project goals, and the list goes on.
You can quickly become overwhelmed and unorganized if you don’t have a good system in place to communicate your goals to your staff and track and measure goal progress and completion.
This is where technology can help significantly towards achieving your goals faster. The assistance of a technology pro and CIO and a Service offers a way to easily set up goal communications, tracking, and reporting efficiently.
Automate Goal Setting & Tracking with the Right Tech
Deciding on a goal is just the first step towards achievement. Beyond setting your goals, a successful business goal process includes things like:
- Meetings and communications
- Delegation of tasks
- Follow up
- Measurement and reporting
- Adjustments
- Review of timeline
- Identifying when the goal is achieved
As you can image, trying to do all those things without the use of technology of automated processes, could take 100% of your time, leaving you none to actually work towards goal achievement. Here are tips for using cloud technologies to help streamline the entire process.
Facilitate Communication
Lack of communication and collaboration is cited by 86% of both executives and their employees as the reason for workplace failures. If your team doesn’t know what you expect from them on a particular goal progression, then they’re not going to be able to achieve the outcome you’re looking for.
Team chat tools, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, help to bridge the communication gap and keep everyone in real-time communications in an organized way. They use channels where employees can message each other and share files about a particular channel topic (like a project or goal), and they integrate with multiple other applications to automate things like alerts.
Delegate Tasks and Track Goal Progress
It’s important for your business goals to be timelined and detailed if you want a good chance at success. Project management software, like Jira, Asana, Trello, and others, give you the ability to watch a goal or project progress as each task is completed.
Tasks needed to achieve your goal are typically depicted on cards that can have details included like:
- Who is assigned the task
- Task deadline
- Task description
- Associated comments and files
The task cards are then dragged through each stage of progression (“in progress,” “awaiting approval,” “Done,” etc.) so you can immediately see how your goals are progressing and what may need to be adjusted to keep them on track and avoid bottlenecks.
Automate Team Follow Ups
Following up with people to see where they’re at with a task or scheduling long meetings for status updates can be done much more efficiently using cloud software that automates the follow up process.
One that does this well is Basecamp, a project management software that includes an automated status email you can have the system email everyone at the end of a day, a week, or any timeline you like. The follow up email can ask a series of questions or just one “What did you achieve on this project this week?”, then answers are sent back to the manager, who has all the follow up conveniently done by the automation and answers awaiting them in their inbox.
Use Business Intelligence Reporting
Is your goal of changing to a new packaging material providing the cost-savings you were hoping for? Or is it costing you more in damaged shipment replacements?
Being able to read all your data in a variety of ways is paramount into ensuring your goal setting is actually providing you with the outcome you’re looking for.
Using a business intelligence dashboard, like Microsoft Power BI or Yellowfin, helps you “read the tea leaves” of all your important business data so you’re making well informed decisions about your goal setting and outcomes.
Technology Powers Successful Outcomes
Genuine Technology Group assists businesses with ensuring their technology is set up to support and power their goals. We can help you employ the right tools for your business and fully utilize the ones you may already be using.
Learn more by setting up a free consultation today! Call us at 971-288-0880 or reach us online.