What leading indicators do you use to measure your effectiveness and forecast potential problems?

Question

How do you measure performance as a suplier in your industry?
How does your performance compare to the industry standards?

Answer 1

As a financial person, I use financial growth indicators as my measurables, such as sales growth, operating changes, quick ratios. Its a little harder to measure oneself as a supplier because we tend to protect measurables that can used for benchmarking against competitors, its easier to make comparison against previous information. In ye olde fashioned SWOT analysis we keep everything but the strengths to ourselves. Since I can say we've had steady, controlled (ha ha) growth compared to previous years, as opposed to downsizing the operation.