At Infinity Group, we have diverse experience in conducting business assessments across hundreds of organisations. These assessments enable them to identify the weaknesses, strengths and opportunities within their existing processes, strategies and systems, with the aim of continuous improvement.

Assessment are a core services we offer our clients, so we like to think of ourselves as experts. Over the years, we’ve developed a clear understanding of what makes a successful business assessment that truly drives changes. And we’ve also seen what doesn’t work.

In this blog, we delve into our tried-and-tested approach for business assessments and the common mistakes organisations make, so you learn the keys to success.

What is the role of a business assessment?

First things first: why would you need to undertake a business assessment?

Business assessment can vary greatly in terms of what it is you are assessing. It may include existing systems, processes, readiness for new technologies or overall business strategy. But in each of these scenarios, the role of the assessment is to analyse what’s working and what needs to be improved.

Assessments are crucial for taking stock of your business. It’s an opportunity to step away from everyday operations and look at the bigger picture. As you do this, you’ll begin to understand your organisation more, including:

• What is performing well (and maybe even needs to be scaled)
• What is limiting your performance
• What is causing staff tension
• What is eating into your profit
• Where opportunities are being missed
• How prepared you are for the future
• What is preventing your goals from being realised

By understanding the answers to these questions, you can make better decisions across your business. This allows you to reduce costs, streamline processes, improve revenue streams and progress your growth plans.

We find that assessments are particularly crucial for businesses who have undergone a period of change or rapid growth. In these circumstances, direction is often in the frenzy. An assessment can help bring everything back together under a considered strategy, while allowing you to make incremental changes for sustainable growth and long-term efficiency.

What is the Infinity Group approach to business assessments?

We conduct assessments across several core areas. While each assessment is tailored depending on what the client is looking to uncover, there are some set criteria we look to determine.

What we want to find out_

Firstly, we want to understand the pains facing the business. This could be tied up in a specific system or process, or across the organisation generally. By determining these pain points, we endeavour to identify the root issues causing them.

Next, we want to learn your objectives. For example, what is the 3-5 year plan for the business? Are you intending to grow? Are you planning to change the products and services you offer, or even alter your proposition? The answers will drive the direction the business needs to move in, which is crucial in pinpointing where change is needed.

Another core part of any assessment is knowing the organisational structure. Again, this is dictated by the breadth of the assessment, but we want to unearth how different divisions, departments and users are affected.

If multiple teams are affected, we’ll need to consider how this impacts your strategy as well as each stakeholder. If there are mergers or acquisitions involved, we’ll need to understand how these moving parts might lead to obstacles or opportunities moving forward.

We’ll also conduct persona mapping of your users and stakeholders, which helps us to better comprehend their specific behaviours and challenges. This can highlight any issues and potential solutions.

Much of this stage is about gathering intelligence on your business. However, this insight will drive the next stage: creating a roadmap for improvement.

What we assess your business against_

When we gather information on your business, there are four core pillars we’re looking to judge. These align with Microsoft’s own approach to assessments.

1. Revenue growth: how are your existing processes/systems limiting your ability to grow revenue, and are there opportunities to improve this?
2. Cost reduction: what is reducing your cost efficiency and where can costs be minimised?
3. Proposition transformation: how can you transform your proposition to meet your goals?
4. Risk mitigation: what threats are facing your business and how can you protect against them?

By using these pillars, we can identify what’s holding your business back and find opportunities that drive a real impact.

Next steps_

Once we have undergone the intelligence gathering, the next step is determining actionable outcomes. From our findings, we create a matrix that outlines the problems and opportunities, potential solutions, the difficulty involved and the impact on performance.

This becomes a roadmap, prioritised based on what is going to drive the fastest reward. This roadmap will be sensibly phased, allowing you to practically apply changes in a way that ensures you get the benefit without overwhelming the organisation.

It’s crucial at this stage to consider buy-in from the rest of the business. A business case will support this, bringing together assessment insights to explain why the change is needed and how the strategy will drive results.

At the end of our assessments, we provide business case to help you bring stakeholders on board. These include a costed plan for any recommendations we’ve made, alongside the ROI to be gained. This ensures you know the value of your efforts and can communicate these clearly.

Common mistakes businesses make in their assessments_

In some cases, businesses choose to conduct their own assessments. However, we find they often fall into common traps, especially if they’ve not undertaken their own assessments before. These include:

1. Not being objective_

You are deeply involved in your business, which can shape your perception. However, to assess effectively, you need to be objective across your entire business.

Often, this can be made worse when you involve other stakeholders. Each business team will have different priorities that drives what they think is the solution. Your finance team will likely want a new ERP system, while your sales team want a new CRM tool. It makes it hard to recognise the root cause and build a neutral strategy.

2. Singular focus_

Many businesses believe problems are caused by one thing: a bad system or a specific process. This can lead to them becoming fixated on addressing that, while missing the deeper causes in their business.

For example, you might think your CRM is the issue your sales aren’t increasing. However, it might be that your customer service isn’t proactive enough, which is preventing repeat custom. A new CRM alone will not fix this.

Another obstacle here is that nobody in your business is an expert in everything. While they may be knowledgeable in their specific area, they won’t know other areas deeply. This can make it hard to look at the bigger picture and understand how problems in one department can impact another.

3. Taking enough time_

There’s no way around it: a good assessment should take time to complete. You want to gather all the data to gain the right conclusions and drive change. In our experience, it takes weeks rather than days.

However, it can be difficult to take time out of working in your business to work on improving it. This leads to assessments being deprioritised, which causes issues to grow and delays positive impact.

4. Leaving it too late_

Assessing and addressing weaknesses in your business can strengthen its foundations. By solving issues earlier and finetuning your operations, you’ll get better results earlier and prevent any obstacles that may emerge.

It’s due to this that we recommend doing assessments immediately after periods of growth or change, so you can streamline processes before they become strained.

Despite this, many businesses hold off doing assessments, which can lead to worse ramifications.

Why leverage external support for your business assessments?

Due to the common barriers facing businesses when conducting their own assessments, we recommend leveraging external support when you can.

There are many reasons for this, including:

• Get the skills you need: Assessments require specific skills, including the ability to gather intelligence, draw conclusions and identify practical solutions. An external expert should have these skills, plus plenty of experience running assessments. They’ll also be able to support you through project mapping and change management, ensuring your assessment turns into an actionable roadmap that drives results.
• An objective view: An external party is removed from your business, enabling them to see the big picture. They can take an objective view of different areas, which makes it easier for them to find underlying causes and hidden opportunities.
• Cross-functional: A good assessor should be experienced in reviewing every element of your business. This enables them to find issues and opportunities at every level, from specific systems and security to IT infrastructure and strategy. This again increases the likelihood of them uncovering key findings.
• Alleviate the time pressure: It’s hard to get the time to check your business health if you’re preoccupied with daily tasks. By outsourcing the assessment to someone else, you can ensure it gets done without draining your resource or letting other things slide.
• Gain an actionable roadmap: Most external assessments will result in a roadmap, based on the findings. This can give you a clear direction for driving change and enabling you to optimise your business.

By utilising external support, you’re more likely to have a high-quality assessment that brings the end results you need.

Our assessments_

Led by our clients’ needs and research from our Innovation Lab, we’re proud to offer a range of business assessments, including:

• Business Value Assessment: uncover the best Microsoft technologies for your needs and ensure ROI from your solutions
• Power Platform Needs Assessment: understand how to best apply Power Platform to generate business benefits
• Business Central Needs Assessment: learn how Dynamics 365 Business Central can evolve your ERP processes
• Solution Audit: review the impact of your solution and find optimisation opportunities
• CRM Vision and Value: identify issues in your existing CRM and use them to build a vision for change
• Low-code Vision and Value: align your use of low-code tools to your business strategy
• AIM Assessment: pinpoint what’s involved in your migration from on-premises to cloud-based environments

Every assessment has been designed to uncover the strengths and weaknesses within your business. With our expert consultants’ guidance, you’ll also gain a roadmap to improve your performance and facilitate sustainable growth.

To find out more about our assessments and what’s involved, get in touch today.