By Tricia M. Taitt, Fractional CFO and Author of Dancing with Numbers

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I recently had a client ask us to build a dashboard.

He said, “I keep hearing that at this stage in my business I should have a dashboard.”

So I asked him a simple question:

What would the dashboard help you do?

Because the reality is, CEOs do not need a dashboard tracking numbers, simply to report on the business or check performance.

You should be using your numbers to run the business better.

A dashboard is only valuable if the information inside of it helps you make decisions, identify inefficiencies, and improve how your business operates.

The Scorecard Most CEOs Do Not Have, But Need

In Traction, Gino Wickman talks about the importance of a scorecard.

He defines it as a set of 5 to 15 measurable metrics leadership tracks consistently to evaluate performance.  It sounds simple, but very few businesses do this well.

What I usually see instead is:

• A P&L and balance sheet reviewed once a month
• Revenue watched closely
• Maybe some loose cash flow forecasting
• Everything else judged by gut feel, instinct, or the $$$ in a bank account

The problem is that instinct only works for so long.

At a certain point, gut feel stops being enough!

A true scorecard should do three things:

1. Give you visibility into how the business is actually operating
2. Define what success looks like by setting targets
3. Create accountability by assigning ownership

Because your dashboard should not just tell you what happened.

It should help you determine what needs to happen next.

Start With What Keeps You Alive

No matter what kind of business you run, there are two metrics every CEO should know cold:

Average Monthly Cash Burn

  • How much cash is actually leaving your bank account every month?

  • Not what your P&L says. Not what you think your expenses are.  Actual cash movement!

I have seen plenty of businesses show a profit on paper and still run out of cash.

Cash Runway

How long can your business continue operating at its current burn rate before cash runs out?

This tells you:

• How much time you have to fix a problem
• How much flexibility you have to invest
• Whether you can weather a downturn

Without knowing your runway, you are making decisions without context.

Then Layer in the Metrics That Drive Performance

Once you understand cash, you need metrics that tell you how efficiently your business is running.

A good scorecard should include a mix of:

  • Financial metrics

  • Operational metrics

  • Sales and marketing metrics

  • People metrics

Because the sources of financial issues tend to begin somewhere else in the business and eventually show up in the numbers.

Examples of Metrics That Matter by Business Type

Service-Based Businesses
Examples include consulting firms, agencies, accounting firms, law firms, and other professional service businesses.

Financial
• Gross margin by client or project
• Revenue per employee

Operational
• Billable utilization rate
• Project completion or on-time delivery rate

Sales/Marketing
• Proposal close rate
• Pipeline value

People
• Employee utilization by role
• Team retention and turnover

Small Retail / Product-Based Businesses
Examples include boutiques, specialty retailers, and consumer product businesses.

Financial
• Gross margin by product category
• Average transaction value

Operational
• Inventory turnover
• Sell-through rate

Sales/Marketing
• Sales per location or by channel
• Repeat purchase rate

People
• Revenue per employee
• Labor cost as a percentage of sales

What This Looks Like in Real Life

A client once came to us with what sounded like a straightforward question:

“Are we pricing our services correctly?”

To answer that, we needed to determine profitability by project.

But when we started digging, we realized we had a bigger issue.

We could not calculate project profitability because the company was not tracking employee time.

And in a professional services business, if you are not tracking time, then you do not know:

• Your true cost to deliver services
• Which client projects are profitable
• Whether your team is operating efficiently
• Where margin is leaking

So what started as a pricing question quickly turned into an operational overhaul.

The Hard Part No One Talks About

Implementing operational change is not as simple as buying software.

We had to:

• Select the right time-tracking platform
• Train the team
• Communicate why the change mattered
• Establish expectations around compliance
• Reinforce accountability over time

And here is the part many business owners underestimate:

It took over a year for the process to become fully embedded into the business.

Because operational change is not just about systems. It is about changing behavior.

Once the data became reliable, the insight was powerful.

We discovered the team was spending far more time on non-billable internal work than leadership realized.

Later, when market conditions tightened, the CEO did not have to make emotional decisions.

He had data showing:

• Capacity was underutilized
• Labor costs were too high relative to revenue production
• Team structure needed adjustment

That allowed him to make informed decisions around staffing and profitability.

If You Are Making an Operational Change, Do Not Skip These Steps

Too many businesses roll out a new process and assume people will follow it.

If you want adoption, you need structure and guardrails.

Clearly Define the Process —> Spell out exactly what is expected.

Define What Good Looks Like —> Set measurable standards for success.

Communicate Why It Matters —> Help employees understand why this change matters to the business.

Establish Guardrails and Accountability —> Be clear about what happens when expectations are missed.

Tie It to Performance Management —> The behavior should connect to reviews, bonuses, and promotions.

Reinforce at Multiple Levels —> Managers and leadership need to consistently monitor and reinforce adoption.

Final Thought

The goal of a dashboard is not to have prettier reports.

The goal is to answer two questions:

  • What is happening in my business?

  • What do I need to change because of it?

This is the difference between tracking numbers and leveraging numbers. The businesses that scale most effectively are not the ones with the most data. They are the ones that know how to use their data to improve how they operate.

So I will leave you with this:

What is one number in your business that, if you truly understood it, would change how you lead?

Tricia M. Taitt

Author of Dancing with Numbers

Tricia Taitt is the CEO and Chief Financial Choreographer of FinCore. She holds an M.B.A from The Fuqua School of Business of Duke University, and a BS in Economics with a Finance concentration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. For over 20 years, she’s been a finance professional. Half of the time was spent working on Wall Street while the other half was spent in the trenches side by side with small business owners. As a result of working with FinCore, clients have been able to take control of their numbers and feel more confident in their ability to make decisions, while increasing profits by 10% and building a cash stash to invest in growth. Follow Tricia on LinkedIn and Instagram.