Make the Most Out of Your End-of-Year Data

Best Practices for Your End-of-Year Data

Like most companies around this time of year, yours is probably thinking about what worked, what didn’t work, and what could be improved for next year. For the past twelve months, you’ve gathered heaps of information on your business – everything from inventory to overtime hours. While this data has helped you navigate through the year, it can also chart your way to next year’s success.

One of the best ways to create a successful strategy for the upcoming year is to reflect on your past performance. Like Maya Angelou once said, "You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been." With the end of 2022 rapidly approaching, business leaders are using their data from this year to plan for the year ahead. In this blog, we’ll share four ways you can use your end-of-year data to get a head start in 2023!

What Is End-of-Year Data and Why Does It Matter?

Your end-of-year data tells a story of the ups, downs, obstacles, and victories over the past year. This data can cover your total sales, inventory, vendor payments, overhead costs, payroll, and more. Most importantly, this data can reveal opportunities to improve your current strategy.

Whether you love poring over numbers or hate spreadsheets, one thing is clear: every business should prioritize tracking its end-of-year data. This data helps your company kick off the new year with solutions to prior issues and strategies for continued growth.

3 Ways to Use Your End-of-Year Data

1. Compare Your Initial Goals

What were your goals at the beginning of the year? Sit back for a minute and consider these goals. Identifying your initial objectives for the year creates a reference point for success. This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. Your KPIs can include financial statements, growth rates, customer satisfaction, and other data that reflects your business over the past year.

If you didn’t set firm goals, you can look back at where you were a year ago and take insights from there. How does your performance this year compare to the previous year? Be sure to look closely at what worked and how it can be replicated in the future. Even small changes that had a big impact are worth noting. Did you try electronic signature forms to receive feedback from your customer base? If so, what are other digital optimizations you can make to continue that trend?

2. Identify Room for Growth

Now it’s time to consider what didn't go well. This part is every bit as important as evaluating what went well, but it's not always as pleasant. If you can pinpoint any goals your company missed over the year, really take the time to figure out what happened. What went wrong and why? Identifying these failures or shortfalls will help you determine the limiting factors inside your business, i.e. the things that hold you back.

Brainstorm about what could be done differently to reduce your limiting factors. Then focus on solutions that seem the most attainable and make a plan to implement them in the upcoming year. This can include increasing customer satisfaction with follow-ups, reducing paperwork with mobile forms, and reducing overhead costs with remote work.

3. Create Next Year’s Goals

It's time to start paving a path for 2023! Creating well-defined and clear goals is key to business growth and success. Objectives from the previous year can remain if they weren't met or you can shift your goals based on your end-of-year data. This can reflect the year’s accomplishments, failures, or even changing market conditions.

By establishing next year’s goals, you're holding your company accountable. To that end, it's also important to explain how you and your team plan to achieve them. Once your goals are defined, create a game plan on how to meet these goals and track your progress throughout the year.

About GoFormz

GoFormz is a digital forms solution that’s redefining how people and businesses collect and process information. With over 100,000 customers in over 150 countries, we’ve helped customers do everything from creating a digital sign in sheet to automating marketing workflows. We believe that everyone should be able to fill out their forms online and ditch outdated paper processes. That belief set us on a mission to help every customer digitize their forms and modernize how work gets done — all without code.