Critical Success Factors of a Business

If designing the business plan is the first step towards starting a successful business, identifying the critical success factors (CSFs) is the next step in maintaining success. CSFs, as their name implies, are the most important aspects of your business. They are the essential activities that must be performed well in order for your business to succeed.

History

In the 1960s, D. Ronald Daniel first presented the idea of CSFs to help businesses better focus on and implement their strategies. CSFs can be broken into four categories: the industry, competitive strategy, environmental factors and temporal factors.

Measurable Goals

CSFs should be measurable, which means there is a method of measuring whether or not you reach your goal. X amount of transactions per month, certain types of goods sold each month and positive responses on customer surveys are examples of measurable goals.

Large Scale

CSFs should have a large impact on your company's performance.

Identifying CSFs

Before you can identify your CSFs, you must identify your goals. These may include offering excellent customer service, the freshest produce or the cheapest product. Then identify the actions needed to achieve those goals. These are your CSFs.

Examples

Examples of common business CSFs include training and education, quality data and reporting and customer satisfaction.

References

• Critical Success Factors
• Critical Success Factors - Analysis