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Improved Ways To Evaluate Performance for your Agency

To evaluate performance accurately, you must know your immigration consultancy service inside out. And yet there is always room for improvement, no matter how long you have been doing it! Would you agree? Just the way human beings occasionally need to stop and ponder whether they are on track to achieve their goals, so must companies and organizations work to assess and evaluate the performance of their agency.

In the early stages of your immigration consultancy service, it is easy to focus on the day-to-day operations. However, once your immigration consultancy service takes off, it is essential to think about long-term and strategic planning. Gradually, you will hire more staff, create departments within the consultancy, and appoint managers and directors.

Consistent evaluation of your immigration consultancy’s performance is the only way to learn from the past and plan the future. Moreover, this evaluation must consider various angles, leaving no stones unturned. Some of you may be doing so already while others may be new to this process.

Regardless of where you stand, here are six major tips you can use in a questionnaire format, to evaluate performance and improve your immigration consultancy service productivity:

Clarify the purpose of evaluation

The process of evaluation is like self-reflection. You need to take out some quality time for it and get the entire company involved. Hence, it is important for your staff to know why this evaluation is necessary and how they can help make it successful.

Therefore, a lack of clarity about the purpose of an evaluation program can become a bigger issue than you imagine. It can create a sense of disenchantment among administrators, evaluators, and staff, making them reluctant to participate. Alternatively, clarifying the purpose of these reviews will give value to all stakeholders, and enhance the best practice evaluation of your immigration consultancy service.

Measure your core activities

A good starting point for your review is to evaluate what you actually do. Make a checklist of the services you provide to accurately evaluate performance. Then, analyze each service to see how you can improve it or whether you need to launch newer services or reduce the existing ones.

Apart from the clients, make sure those who are responsible to lead these services are part of this process too. Look at details like:

  • Whether your services match client needs.
  • Which services are performing better?
  • Which services are underperforming?
  • Consider areas such as pricing, marketing, sales, and after-sales service.
  • Consider ways in which you can negotiate better deals with your clients.

You can leverage software, to provide you with an overview of your core activities. This can help you in the decision making process. 

Gauge your business efficiency

Internal factors like in-house facilities, the location of the business, people and their skills, among others, are a crucial performance indicator of your immigration consultancy service. At this stage, consider these aspects of your immigration consultancy service and try answering these questions as much as you can:

Location

  • What are your long-term commitments to the property, rental or owned?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of your current location?
  • Do you have room to grow or the flexibility to cut back if necessary?
  • If you move premises, what will be the cost? Will it result in long-term cost savings and improvements in efficiency?

People and skills

  • Do you have the right people and agency culture to achieve your objectives?
  • Are they clear about their roles and responsibilities?
  • Do you pay as well as the competition?
  • Are the employees motivated and satisfied?

Professional skills

  • Do you have a good management team?
  • Do you have skills in the areas of human resources, sales and IT?
  • Have you implemented training and development programs for the employees?

Review your financial position

Most businesses fail due to poor financial management. Furthermore, when it comes to your immigration consultancy’s success, developing and implementing a sound financial management system is vital. While doing so, consider the following:

    • Cash Flow: This is the balance of all of the money flowing in and out of your business. Make sure this is up to date.
    • Working Capital: Have your financial requirements changed? If so, explain the reasons for it. If necessary, take steps to source additional capital.
    • Cost Base: Keep your immigration consultancy service costs under constant review. Make sure the price of your services covers the costs.
    • Borrowing: What is your immigration consultancy’s current position on any lines of credit or business loans? If so, are there other, cheaper forms of finance you could use?

Conduct competitor analysis

To evaluate the performance of your immigration consultancy service, the criteria should not be limited to internal assessments only. Likewise, comparing your services, pricing, and other details with those of your competitors are equally important too. Also, gathering this information may cost some time and effort, but it is well worth it. You must find out the following:

  • Who are your competitors?
  • Which services do they offer?
  • How much do they charge for their services?
  • What are their client profiles and numbers, compared to yours?
  • How is their relationship with clients, compared with yours?
  • What are their competitive advantages and disadvantages, compared with yours?

You can find out more about your immigration consultancy’s competitors in two ways:

  • What do they say about themselves in sales literature, advertisements, press releases, exhibitions, and websites or social media?
  • What do other people say about them – your salespeople, clients, local directories, the Internet, and analysts’ reports?

Evaluate performance and use the results to redefine your business goals

At the end of each review process, it is vital that you prepare work plans to put the new ideas in place. Today’s business environment is exceptionally dynamic. It is likely that you will need regular reviews, updates, and revisions, to achieve or maintain your business success. Post-evaluation, you should do the following:

Maintain a database

For the sake of current and future use, you will need to maintain a database of your findings. Develop a timetable for your next immigration consultancy service performance evaluation. However, do not do conduct evaluations too frequently and maintain a sufficient interval. You can also use a CRM-system for easy analytics and business reports. Refer to Forbes for maintaining a database if you need.

Take action

After the immigration consultancy service evaluation is complete, it is time to take action on your findings.  So, letting the findings go stale by not acting on it will dampen your agency’s smart goals planning and deplete staff motivation.

Thus, to evaluate performance accurately is to measure the business from various angles. Your immigration consultancy service is made of so many different components, internal and external, and ignoring any of them will lead to an incomplete assessment. So, make sure you leave no stone unturned!

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