If someone asked how your business is doing today, how long would the answer take?

Somebody asks you a simple question. How is the business doing?

You know the broad answer. Busy, slow, better than last year. But if they ask for a number, you cannot give one today. You can give one after the accountant closes the month, by which time it describes a month that is already over.

That is the real situation in most businesses. Not that the information does not exist. It exists, in six places, held by four people, in four formats.

What running on old information does

It does not cause a disaster. It causes a delay, every time.

A product stops selling in March and you notice in May. A customer slows down in April and you call him in June. One man's numbers slip for two months and it comes up in an appraisal, not in a conversation when it could still have been fixed.

None of that is a failure of judgement. The judgement was fine. The information arrived late.

One screen, five numbers

You do not need a dashboard with forty charts. Almost every owner needs the same five things, every morning, in one place.

• What we sold this month, against last month
• What has actually been collected, and what is still outstanding
• What is in hand to be delivered
• How many enquiries came in, and how many turned into orders
• What is sitting in the bank right now

Five numbers, ten seconds, every day. Not because you will act on them every day, but because the day something moves, you will see it move.

That is the whole value. Not better reports. Earlier ones.

Try it now. Without calling anybody, write down those five numbers for today. How many could you fill in?

Putting those five numbers on one screen is something we have built many times over. Ask us what it would take for yours.