Back when I was in the corporate world before the year starts we make our sales plan and expense budget for the year. I played a key role in this process because I was a finance analyst and then a business and planning analyst. It was an intense period; it’s the most likely time of the year to make enemies or sometimes, battle lines are drawn….haha.

Although we do a monthly review, the big deal is usually the quarterly review, that’s when top management thoroughly reviews the numbers. We do a detailed variance analysis comparing our plan numbers to actual numbers achieved. It’s not always good news especially when we are significantly below our sales plan and over our expense budget. When that happens I get very creative at justifying why that has happened and how we plan to get back on track by the next quarter. Then I spend the next quarter fasting, praying, hoping and watching my numbers like a hawk. It sucks having to give bad news quarter after quarter, I don’t mind giving the news, it’s just the implications I don’t like 🙂 . More bad new, little or no bonuses, you get my drift.

I’m going somewhere with this, just in case you were wondering 🙂 . The quarterly review usually happens in the first week of Q2 (quarter 2), which is right about now. So it got me thinking, as an agripreneur just starting out how do I complete a quarterly review, when I have no approved sales plan or expense budget. As an agripreneur you have to be creative, so I decided instead of doing a quantitative review I could do a qualitative one with my team.  Basically asking what we said we would do and what we have actually done. It’s very important for us to always look back at what we have and haven’t achieved in order to make the necessary adjustments. To learn from our successes and failures and make better and more informed decisions going forward.

Well I don’t want to bore you with details of the outcome of our review, but I’ll summarise. Q1 2014 wasn’t a kick ass quarter, more goals were not achieved than were achieved, nevertheless some key goals were achieved. We look forward to a good Q2, a lot of the prep work has happened in Q1, so it can only get better.

Moral of the blog post; it’s important to constantly monitor your progress, it allows you to spot your gaps and take necessary actions. Knowledge gained can be used to make better choices for the business going forward.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂 ….here’s to a great Q2!!!!