When you’re running a business, it’s easy to only look at your bottom line as the measure of its success. After all, if your business is making a nice pile of profit, you know that all the elements that make that happen are working too, right? While making profit is a good indicator your business is successful, it is not the only measure of success and shouldn’t be the only thing you focus on.

To make sure that your business is the success you want it to be comes back to what you had in your business plan. There are very few business owners that only listed ‘be profitable’ as a goal of their business. Most common targets people aim for are satisfied guests, loyal and happy staff, great work/life balance, fantastic business reputation and being an industry leader. But how do you measure these items and know that you are successful in them?

Employee Engagement

Measuring the success you have regarding loyal and happy staff is something that can partially be done with data, but most of the time it is measured by how engaged they are. If your staff are engaged with the work they do and the clients they interact with, you can be assured that you have hit this success metric. Your team providing solutions to problems proactively or smiling as they come into work are some good indicators. Every moment of everyday won’t be full of sunshine and rainbows, but if most of the days are, then you have hit this target on the head.

Customer Loyalty

Even though your business is making you a profit, if you are not seeing a high number of return guests then you might not be as successful to the outside world as you thought. Some businesses are lucky with location, or may have very few competitors. But if people don’t come back very often then you may want to look at what’s causing this. Looking at guest feedback and how you and your team interact with guests will show you where your problems are and can drive success metrics outside of financial measurements.

Awards and Accolades

There is nothing better to help you measure the success of your business than outside opinion. Most chambers of business in Australia offer awards for successful businesses, and their measurements have little to do with how profitable you are. Nominating yourself, or being nominated by someone else, can provide you with a way to measure the success of your business well beyond your bottom line.

Measuring the success of your business beyond how much profit you make is a valuable exercise to ensure that profit continues to grow year on year. By focusing on more than the bottom line you can ensure that you remain as successful as possible for years to come.