Eventually, even the healthiest business might get stuck and have trouble reaching their revenue goals. Many business owners feel it might be sales or team that is the issue. However, if the back-end operations are not in order, that can cause the backslide. How tight a business’s operations are will drive that organization’s ability (or inability) to quickly scale.

When your operations aren’t in check, functions will feel sluggish and redundant and you start to notice frustration from team members. The more this happens, the slower your business will be to adjust, grow and scale.

A lot of online business owners like to spend some time at the end of each quarter looking back and reflecting as well as making plans and setting goals for the next 90 days. It is a good time to pause and check-in and evaluate how you are meeting your goals.

When you start to analyze the previous quarter and decide on goals for the upcoming quarter, it is vital that you review your KPIs and metrics. Remember, friends, that data does not lie. You no longer have to guess or use your subjective feelings to know where you are at meeting your targets; simply analyze the data and the answer will be right in front of you.

Let’s dive into the meaning of the term “operations” first. I like to describe it this way: if you think about your business as a house, the marketing side is the front of your house, with the pretty flowers and weed-free lawn. That is the portion of the business that your potential customers see.

However, the back part of your house has boxes full of your things or hasn’t been dusted in a while. It’s somewhat messy back there! For this reason, you only use it to let the dog or close family members in.

Think of operations as the back part of your business. It consists of systems, processes, team projects, goals and metrics to measure those goals, and this is the portion of your business where an operations expert would work.