If you align your plan with your priorities, you will automatically create an action plan. This can be very useful, especially if you review your plan regularly, but at least monthly. Cash position and cash flow serve as very good indicators. Just like in a well-tuned Formula 1 car, planning and reviewing leads to a better performance of your company.

Planning tasks

Your plan will help you

• as an indicator of the development of expenses and revenues, which are, after all, the result of all your business activities,
• as support for decision-making by providing information and
• as a means of monitoring and controlling your business.

Internal benchmarking

Comparing your plan with the previous year's figures can be an excellent way of evaluating your company's performance. And what better way to measure a company's performance than by looking at the available Cash position? What has changed? What is different from last year? These are just a few examples of questions that can be answered by internal benchmarking.

Key performance indicators

To improve the performance of your business, you should understand and monitor the key "drivers" of your business. A driver is defined as a significant factor influencing your business. There are many factors that influence the performance of any business. Therefore, it is important to focus on a handful of them and monitor them carefully.

The three main drivers for most companies are:

• Turnover
• Costs
• (Working) capital

In particular, if you analyze the differences between your actual and planned cash flow or your Cash position , you can draw important conclusions about the impact of your business activities. These analyses can help you to identify problems at an early stage if they are determined on the basis of a consistent Cash flow planning .

Credits: Photo by Jürgen Faè