Quadruple Bottom Line (QBL) For businesses QBL has become a powerful defining factor for operation this century. The quadruple bottom line takes into consideration following factors: 1. Environmental 2. Social [Internal factor] 3.Cultural (including governance) [External factor] 4. Economic.

Some say that sustainable development is dead with current wave of conservative ideals and economic prosperity throughout world. A "What's In It for Me" (WIIFM) attitude. However this is only current paradigm for this cycle.

After all, if environmental, social and cultural factors are not considered, then business operation cannot be sustained. Industrial growth can never be sustained over long periods, due to its cyclic nature and as all resources are finite. Mathematically it is impossible. This may account for why average length of time Australian Companies stay in operation is only 12 years.

If you own or run a business, now is time to take a stand for QBL principles and your environmental responsibility through waste minimisation, energy analysis, reduced rework and handling through quality plan implementation and an increase in social responsibility to increase morale, reduce absenteeism and improve overall work performance, for example.

Governments of day must also stand up for cultural responsibility through good governance and a wider understanding of people's needs, desires and goals in life. Not only will you live up to your environmental and social responsibilities, but you may also save money through increased efficiency and productivity, and hence, increase your bottom line anyway.

Well, providing recommendations for actions/measures is not a very important feature, but if you are not familiar with business operations or just starting a business it is of help to get recommendations for actions/measures to keep your business running.

But even if you have lot of experience running a business, it is sometimes very helpful to get new ideas on how to act. Actions/Measures could only be a recommendation here, because industry sectors are different, and it wouldn't be possible to cover all types of businesses.

Showing priorities to solve bottlenecks

Remember paragraph above about early warning signals, they could be used to find priorities to solve bottlenecks in business operation. First of all warning signals must follow some rules. That means that business ratios supplying signal have to be in a consecutive timely manner to each other. For example, when you have 5 ratios depending on each other in a consecutive manner, than you have automatically a priority to follow when actions are needed.

In case your ratio number 3 has a yellow signal and number 4 a red signal, than you know that you first have to solve problem ratio 4 is showing, because you got red flag and it has influence to ratio 5, which was green. This small example shows how important it is to use right business ratios and how important it is to concentrate on traffic light systematic when taking actions.

Short Reporting Cycle

A short reporting cycle may be a month for some business operators, but when waiting for Early-Warning-System analysis for about 4 weeks, you are only able to take action on erroneous trends once per month. And in some cases this could be already to late.

Really short is a reporting cycle, which uses a week as its basic period. Why using reporting cycles of one week? Just because you can see erroneous trends earlier and being able to take actions, while others are still waiting their reports to come. On a weekly reporting cycle you could act at least 3 to 4 weeks earlier as on monthly reporting cycles.

I don't think you are driving your car blind for more than a small part of a second. Just imagine what happens, when driving your car blind for a month, just like usual reporting cycle for business reporting? You are right, just a few seconds after start driving you have first accident. Even if you are an airline pilot and having an autopilot system, you steadily have to control system, to be sure that you are heading in right direction.

Reasonable Price

Reasonable is a price, which nearly all small businesses could afford. Even if price is paid in instalments or as rent for licence to use a system. An Early-Warning-System, as lean version described here, doesn't has to be very expensive.

However, decision is yours, if you like to pay more or less on an Early-Warning-System, but you should carefully check features and benefits a solution offers.

Conclusion

Early-Warning-Systems for small businesses is a very important and often overlooked issue, which could assist to establish a more focused business operation, but only when Early-Warning- System shows actual bottlenecks and is able to provide priorities for actions/measures.

However, most small business owners or operators are not aware of problems Early-Warning-Systems could bring them before there eyes. Furthermore, possibility of finding new target markets, new solutions or ideas to improve existing products, is just a benefit an Early-Warning-Systems solution may offer as well.

If you think described solution is not an Early-Warning- System, because an Early-Warning-System has to be something where you have to handle lots of data and documents, well, that might be another definition for it, but starting with a small solution is always better than doing nothing. There is no reason to use a big system to provide early-warnings, and for small businesses big systems don't make sense at all. ------------------ ARTICLE END ------------------