Jean Roberts

These are my brief notes from the very early 1990s – and they are even more relevant today:

Major signs of business failure:

• financial ratios
• lack of cashflow forecasting
• lack of financial information
• creative accounting
• trading irregularities
• non-financial signs:
  • low morale
  • decline in quality
  • customer complaints
  • deferred capital expenditure
  • rising inventories
  • out-dated products
  • declining market-share

This brings home the truth that technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself.   However sophisticated your technology, these remain major signs of impending or imminent business failure.

Copy these, and keep them where you can refer to them at least weekly.