Business Maintenance for Peak Performance: Internal Analysis will Rev Up Your Business, Part 1 -

Business Maintenance for Peak Performance: Internal Analysis will Rev Up Your Business, Part 1

From my experience, cars and companies have a lot in common when it comes to keeping them running smoothly and achieving top performance. The owner's manual for any business is the strategic plan that has been developed. The gauges are the financial reports that are generated on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis.

by Dave Crawford
VP of Training & Program Marketing
Am-Pac/Tire Pros

From my experience, cars and companies have a lot in common when it comes to keeping them running smoothly and achieving top performance. The owner’s manual for any business is the strategic plan that has been developed. The
gauges are the financial reports that are generated on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis.

Beyond those gauges should be warning lights that tell you when something needs your immediate attention. It may be a significant drop-off in car count. Perhaps inventory seems to be disappearing, or cash flow is not meeting daily operational needs and credit is being extensively utilized.

As with a car, the appearance of a warning light is often tied to a failure to follow the plan, or an ongoing lack of attention to the financial reports. In today’s harsh business environment, just as with operating a vehicle in extreme cold or heat, the failure to invest in such maintenance can have almost immediate and extremely costly consequences.

The only place a vehicle will run by itself is downhill, and the same can be said about a business. Oftentimes in business, we let things run by themselves and never take the time to perform ongoing preventive maintenance to ensure it continues to run smoothly. To start, a preventive maintenance plan for your business needs to have several elements. There needs to be daily or ongoing maintenance, a monthly analysis and a yearly review.

Daily Maintenance
Every time we drive we make certain there is gas in the tank, regularly glance at the gauges and stay alert for strange noises. We also check tire pressure on a regular basis, and even run the vehicle through a car wash from time to time.
Shop owners should follow a similar routine of daily monitoring and maintenance. Look at items such as daily car count, average repair order, repair/service sales and profit results to ensure performance is meeting the target. There will be good days and bad days, but you should be constantly looking for any trends.

Negative trends can be ­addressed by making modifications to the weekly advertising or its focus. Results should be posted and shared with your team. There are a lot of key items that can be looked at and, depending on your business model you should develop a short list that can be ­reviewed and point you in the right direction when the numbers are off.
Examine your facility the same way a commercial pilot does a walk-around before take-off. The facility needs to be kept clean — floors swept and mopped, trash emptied, bays clean, and restrooms clean and stocked.

Engage in ongoing coaching to ­remind your people of the need to take excellent care of your customers. ­Stress the importance of performing courtesy checks and recommending needed services. “Huddle meetings” with your team each morning are a great way to emphasize these points. Be quick to reinforce positive behavior, and coach those who are in need of additional direction. Make sure they stay motivated and understand the business ­objectives. The point of ongoing daily maintenance is to ensure that minor issues are addressed before they grow into big problems.

Develop a daily routine that is supported by a checklist. According to Dr. George Lucas, a senior associate with U.S. Learning Inc. in Memphis, most businesses that crash do so not because of a single major problem, but rather from a series of oversights that combine to ­create ­massive consequences. He says, “Some of these issues are more ­subjective, and others are more ­numbers related.

“The subjective ones mostly involve your people. In many cases, you can walk into a business and sense in just a few minutes whether there is positive or negative energy in the place. When it’s negative, there needs to be an immediate change — and that ­energy begins with the leader.”

For the objective issues, Lucas ­recommends the creation of a simple dashboard that can quickly tell you whether performance is meeting or exceeding expectations, as well as where it is lagging.

“You want one sheet that can be produced each day or week that tells you at a glance where your attention is needed,” Lucas advises. “Color-coded ones may work best, with a green, ­yellow and red orientation.” He also recommends that this dashboard be highly visible on an ongoing basis. “They don’t put the temperature and oil pressure gauges in the back of the headrest. You want your dashboard to be in your line of sight.

“It is not about drowning in data; ­instead, it is about making informed business decisions in a timely fashion. A couple of hours invested with your bookkeeper or accountant to create the proper dashboard can save you many wasted hours, put money in your pocket, and can be the ultimate key to thriving and growing your business.”

Stay tuned for the January/February issue, where we will discuss monthly and quarterly shop maintenance, as well as annual checkups.

Dave Crawford is vice president of training and program marketing for Am-Pac/Tire Pros. He previously was marketing director for American Car Care Centers. Crawford is also a contributing editor for Tire Review magazine.

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