To grow a business, you need to assess operations effectively

When stepping into a new business, your barometer of business performance can't come from KPIs and SLAs alone – you need to pick up the phone and speak to your clients.

There's a common misconception that assessing a business should start with metrics. While they of course offer useful high-level insight, they're not the most honest source of truth.

Your clients are. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling you what's really going on. Their perspectives give you a clearer path to fixing the real inefficiencies, improving processes, and ultimately driving growth in the business.

This honesty is critical because inefficient processes can cost a business at least 20–30% of its annual revenue. If you want real answers, go straight to the source.

Start with as many customers as possible

I start by talking to as many customers as possible to gauge their experience with the business.

Which team members did they deal with, and how was their experience? Did they get the value they needed from the products or service? Was there a point in the process that let them down?

Any and every detail is helpful when trying to map out where the real inefficiencies are hiding.

From customer experience to team capability

Everything, when assessing operations, then ultimately trickles down from this point. Of course, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to scrutinising operations. Every business is different, and generalising can be difficult.

However, with a good sense of the customer's experience in mind, you can begin to understand the big-picture operational processes, such as how well the team works together, and, for example, if there are any knowledge gaps in the team's understanding of the product.

This will help you to gauge what capabilities exist in the current team – and how effective the company's learning and development strategy is.

Digging deeper depends on the business model

Gathering these insights will give you a bird's-eye view of the firm's operations. But it is important to always dig deeper. How you dig deeper depends on whether you're analysing a product- or service-led business.

For example, in a product-led business, I always analyse service tickets. Specifically, how quickly they were solved, how effective the team was in solving these issues, and who out of the product development team is responsible for managing these issues.

In a service-led business, testing the IT systems to spot any 'deeper' operational faults is critical. This is because most service-led businesses are reliant on IT systems to service their clients effectively and efficiently.

I also tend to consider whether anything is being automated by AI, and if so, whether it is being done in the right way. The integration of AI is becoming more imperative to enhance operational efficiency, but that is only true when it has been integrated correctly.

The principle stays the same

Of course, these are just examples of how I assess a company's operations – and they won't apply to every business. But the principle remains the same. Start with the client to get an honest headline view, then interrogate processes from the top down.

You can spend hours crunching numbers and feeling confident in your understanding of the business – only for that view to unravel after a single conversation. That's why I will always start with the client.