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Business performance assessment

1CFOCenter business performance assessment

25 questions. Five improvement areas. One clearer place to start.

Score what is true today—not what is intended, planned, or occasionally achieved. Strong scores should be supported by current evidence.

How to score
1 · Serious Weakness

Not established, not understood, or consistently failing

2 · Weak / Inconsistent

Occasional activity, but unreliable and poorly controlled

3 · Partially Effective

Basic practices exist, but execution and results remain inconsistent

4 · Strong

Consistently effective, measured, and managed

5 · Exceptional Strength

Fully consistent, high-performing, and supported by clear evidence

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0 of 25 answered

Higher Profits

1. Do you know which customers, products, services or jobs, and salespeople—as applicable—generate the most and least gross or contribution profit, and do you use that information to guide pricing, account assignments, resource allocation, and performance management?
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2. Are gross margins by customer and by product, service, or job—as applicable—reviewed at least monthly against established targets, with unfavorable trends investigated and corrective actions taken before small margin losses become significant problems?
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3. Are prices reviewed at least quarterly—and sooner when costs or market conditions change—using current information about costs, capacity, customer value, and competitive conditions, with discounts and other pricing exceptions approved and tracked?
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4. Does management conduct a formal quarterly, line-by-line review of expense categories and recurring financial commitments—and eliminate, reduce, consolidate, or renegotiate costs that do not adequately support customers, employees, operations, growth, or profitability?
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5. Is monthly operating profit compared with budget and prior-year results, with material variances quantified, explained promptly, and assigned to accountable owners for corrective action?
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Stronger Cash Flow

6. Does the company maintain a rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast, update it weekly, compare actual results with the forecast, and use it to make decisions before cash becomes urgent?
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7. Are customer payment terms, invoicing accuracy, collections, aging balances, billing disputes, and—where appropriate—sales commissions linked partly to cash collection actively managed to accelerate cash receipts?
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8. Are inventory, work in process, purchasing commitments, and slow-moving or obsolete items reviewed at least monthly using aging, turnover, completion, and demand information, with actions assigned to release unnecessarily trapped cash?
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9. Are payroll, vendor payments, taxes, debt obligations, capital expenditures, and owner distributions incorporated into the cash forecast—and does the company maintain a defined minimum cash reserve or available borrowing capacity before discretionary spending or distributions are approved?
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10. Does the company consistently convert reported profit into cash, and does it review monthly how accounts receivable, inventory, accounts payable, capital expenditures, debt payments, taxes, and owner distributions affect that conversion?
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Better Leadership

11. Are leadership roles, decision rights, performance expectations, and accountability documented, current, and clearly understood throughout the company?
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12. Have managers been given clearly defined decision authority, performance targets, financial limits, and escalation rules—and do they consistently solve problems, make timely decisions, and deliver agreed results without unnecessary owner or CEO intervention?
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13. Are leaders’ performance measures reviewed monthly, with formal quarterly evaluations of results, commitments, corrective actions, and progress toward agreed objectives?
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14. Does the company have a disciplined talent system that recruits high-performing, values-aligned employees—“Champion Employees”—retains top performers, and evaluates every employee monthly or at least quarterly against specific, measurable goals, responsibilities, and deliverables, with performance gaps addressed promptly?
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15. Does the leadership team hold a disciplined weekly meeting where cross-functional issues are raised candidly, decisions and action owners are documented, and company-wide priorities take precedence over departmental interests?
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Clear Priorities

16. Has the leadership team formally agreed upon and communicated the company’s three to five most important annual goals—and can every leader explain why those goals matter to the company’s financial performance, customers, employees, and long-term direction?
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17. For each annual goal, is there a written goal plan identifying one accountable owner, the current baseline, a numerical target, a completion date, and clearly defined quarterly milestones?
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18. At least monthly, does leadership review every annual goal and quarterly milestone, assign an On Track, At Risk, or Off Track status, and document delays, obstacles, missed commitments, corrective actions, and accountable owners?
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19. Does the company clearly tell employees which work must be completed first, provide the time, people, and resources needed to complete it, and identify which less important tasks should be delayed, delegated, or stopped when workloads compete?
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20. Does every employee understand the company’s main annual goals and have at least one specific, measurable monthly goal or performance commitment directly aligned with those goals—with progress reviewed each month and the next month’s commitment clearly agreed upon?
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Smoother Operations

21. Are the company’s critical operating processes documented, standardized, understood, and followed consistently—and supported by a continuous-improvement system that records problems and opportunities, assigns owners and deadlines, implements corrective actions, and updates operating standards?
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22. Does a weekly operating dashboard show a focused set of leading indicators—with defined targets and accountable owners—that reveal emerging problems in quality, delivery, productivity, capacity, cost, and customer service early enough for corrective action?
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23. When a material or recurring operating problem occurs, does the company identify and correct the root cause, assign an owner and completion date, and verify that the problem does not recur—rather than repeatedly relying on firefighting, expediting, or owner intervention?
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24. Does the company maintain a rolling workload and capacity plan for an appropriate forward period—generally 8 to 13 weeks—that identifies constraints early enough to adjust staffing, scheduling, purchasing, and departmental handoffs before they cause overtime, expediting costs, idle capacity, missed deliveries, or lost profit?
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25. Does the company review on-time delivery, first-pass quality, rework, customer complaints, and order-to-delivery cycle time—as applicable—at least monthly, and do these measures remain at or above target as sales volume increases without disproportionate overtime, rework, or senior-management intervention?
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15 minutes. Owner to operator.

Start with the problem.

If this sounds familiar, tell me what is happening in your business. We can start with a short conversation.

Let’s talk for 15 minutes

Erich Stolz, CTP
832-372-5419
CFO@1CFOcenter.com