Businesses are facing increasing challenges in the marketplace. To
stay competitive and to be successful, businesses need to take a complete
view of the company.
What are your critical success factors? (What are the activities that
must happen and are critical to the success of your business?) How are
you performing in the market? What's your market share? Are your customers
satisfied with your product or services? Why or why not? Why do they
buy from your competitor instead of you? What is (are) your competitor(s)
doing? How do you measure company performance? What are the key indicators
of your company's performance?
A SMART assessment will help evaluate these areas of your business-and
many more.
The SMART (Strategic Management Analysis
Review Tool) process was developed by the Missouri Small
Business Development Centers (SBDC) and University of Missouri Extension. Its purpose is to help you understand the challenges
and opportunities facing your business.
The principles of SMART were founded on the Malcolm Baldridge
National Quality Award and many state-level quality awards, including
the Missouri Quality Award. The SMART criteria represent an international
set of practices associated with excellence and apply to all businesses,
regardless of size, location or industry.
Too often businesses wait until it's too late before they change their
strategy. SMART is a self-assessment that helps you recognize
the company's strengths and identify missed opportunities for improvement.
The SMART criteria are built upon a set of core values and concepts
that are the foundation for business requirements and results. These
core values and concepts are: Customer-Driven Quality, Leadership, Continuous
Improvement and Learning; Valuing Employees, Fast Response, Design Quality
and Prevention, Long-Range View of the Future, Management by Fact, Partnership
Development, Public Responsibility and Citizenship, and Results Focus.
Typically, a team of Missouri SBDC counselors will conduct an extensive
interview with the business owner and/or management. The team will collect
information from your business, evaluate the information according to
the SMART criteria, and give your business a feedback report,
recognizing strengths, opportunities and recommendations.
The SMART criteria look at key business performance areas. The
factors can change, depending on a company's business strategy, and
they sometimes vary with different industries. The SMART process
looks at your company in six categories:
- Customer and Market Focus.
How does your company understand your customers, competitors and the
marketplace? This category addresses how the company segments its market.
Do you know the requirements of your customer, and how do you measure
customer satisfaction? Gathering information from your customers will
help you evaluate satisfaction with your product or service and determine
future requirements of the market.
- Strategic Planning
This category helps you to look at how you plan your company's future.
Here the business examines the information used in planning and the
key people involved in the planning process. The company also examines
its performance relative to the strategic plan.
- Process Management
The focus here is how the company accomplishes its work. Processes
are the set of actions required to accomplish a task. Process management
includes not only the operational activities of the company, but support
and management functions as well. The company examines and measures
the processes that are critical to its success.
Some sample questions of issues addressed in this category include:
What is your relationship to your business suppliers? Do your suppliers
know what you expect of them, and how do you measure supplier performance?
How does your business consider supplier and partner relationships in
your strategic planning?
- Human Resource Focus
Even small companies with a handful of employees need to be concerned
about their workforce. Good performance comes from employee satisfaction,
education and training. Effective communication is essential to ensuring
that your company's employees have the information needed to perform
well. In this category, you are asked how your company identifies and
evaluates employee training and education, as well as employee satisfaction
and well being.
- Information and Analysis
How does your business analyze information? How do you determine what
information is needed? More often than not, businesses measure company
performance by the bottom line only. Businesses often fail to evaluate
those areas that drive sales and profit.
Sales and profit are end results, and at this point, it's sometimes too late
to make improvements. This SMART category will help you identify
other performance measures. There should be a good balance of company
performance measures, such as operational, customer-related, employees
and financial. All factors that are critical to the success of your
business should be systematically analyzed.
- Leadership
Leadership sets the directions for a business. As a leader of your
company, you set goals and values of the company to employees and
customers. The SMART team will help you evaluate how you communicate
and promote your company goals and values. The criteria in this category
help the business leader analyze how you review performance and your
effectiveness as a leader.
Finally, SMART looks at your business results: comparing sales
from year to year, market share, customer satisfaction, financials and
a competitive analysis. The SMART team will help your business
recognize its strengths and opportunities and work with you to develop
an action plan for improvement.
Frequently, the "little things" can cause businesses to
miss opportunities. Don't you think it's time your business gets SMART?
More information can be found on the Missouri Small Business Development
Centers web site on the SMART
section.
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Authored by: Virginia Wilson, Business and Industry
Specialist, University of Missouri Extension
Source: Creating Quality Newsletter, Volume
10, Number 3, March 2001
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