Building A Logistical Analysis of Your Business

"Plans" creative commons Flickr

In May of 2006 I wrote an article designed to help business owners visualize their business. "The Battlefield Map as a Communication Tool" is a popular landing zone at Elemental Truths. By converting the logistics of your business into visual elements on a map, more meaning can be drawn from the results.

Here are the "how to" mechanics of how to build your battle plan.

1. Make a Map!

There are some excellent pieces of architectural software out there that you can pick up for very little expense. Drop by your local hardware store for the Broderbund 3D Home Architect. Or, grab a pad of graph paper and do it old school.

How ever you decide to build your map, laminate it or place it in a sheet protector because you will need several copies and you want to make sure you are working from the same base each time.

2. Chart the communication.

The "if I needs."
a. If I need a record I see...
b. If I need merchandise I see...
c. If I need to make a purchase I see...
d. If I need a client file I see...
e. If I need financial data I see...
f. If I need growth projections I see...
g. If I need information on a product I see...

Guess what? If the answer to more than 7 of those questions is you, you need to restructure your work load. This is especially true if you are the core resource of your business. If the only time your business is making money is when you, yourself are conducting operations, every hour you spend on items a-g is an hour your not bringing in revenue. If nothing else, consider some part time office support or even out sourcing some of the mundane tasks.

Use colored ink to draw a line between you and the people you speak to more than 5 times in a day. Clients should be receiving the majority of your connections.

3. Time investment.

Write in the number of minutes you spend at each location of your map.

You may find a disturbing amount of time lost at your computer doing things like answering emails. Again, think office support and outsourcing.

4. Hot Spots.

Any time there is an altercation or disruption in your organization chart it on your map.

a. Who was involved?
b. What exactly happened?
c. When did it occur?
d. Where, did it happen?
e. Why did it happen?
f. How can it be corrected to avoid a future occurrence.

5. Faces in the crowd.

Record the individuals who "happen to be" bystanders when problems occur. If you see an individual is frequently a bystander when incidents occur you may be seeing more than a bystander.

Tracking patterns may not be the most exciting part of your business, but when you place the collected data in a battlefield map as indicated above it can be an invaluable visual tool.