Numbers Tell a Story

by Danny Summers

Last week I shared the message What a Story to Tell and focused on the stories of how plants were found or developed and by whom. I believe the more background information about our plants the better our Centers can connect plants to people. But this week, the Numbers Tell a Story.

Last Thursday, our final GROUPtalk LIVE Series session for 2023 featured Tim Quebedeaux walking Centers through the reporting process for The Group's Annual P&L Study for 2023. Watching Tim and our Centers in attendance interact gave me the idea for this message.

WDR 2023 - 5,234 and Counting!
Let's first think about our new Weekly Department Review (WDR) Online which is about to complete its first full year in this new online format. We have had 120 Centers participating in the 2023 program and Tim says with the most recent week (Week 49) we have had 5,234 weekly reports uploaded – that's 96.8% reporting! The summary page is shown here.

This reflects an amazing level of commitment by every Center participating and, of course, Tim Quebedeaux providing the weekly communications as well as managing every week's processing and summary reporting!

The WDR Online is building a massive amount of data our Centers can leverage and learn from in future weeks, months, and years. And Tim, being the ideal "Numbers Guy," is like a "kid in the candy store" as we go into 2024. The WDR Online is truly one way... Numbers Tell a Story!

And turning to The Group's Annual P&L Study for 2023, this will be the 20th year of this important program. Tracking and benchmarking not only the 25 product categories of sales, but transaction count, average sale and many areas on both costs and performance.

Last week, Tim walked through the areas of the reporting process and also discussed some details he typically gets questions about as Centers work on their reports.

While the WDR is open (Centers see each others' sales data), the Annual P&L Study is blind and each participating Center will receive their own individual report, comparing their performance to Total Group, Center Type Group and Best of the Best Group averages. There is a "Lite" version option if a Center cannot produce data for the entire range of the P&L Study. All Group Centers will receive their invitation and reporting form to participate January 15th with a deadline for completion of February 15th.

And if you think the WDR Online is where Numbers Tell a Story... the Annual P&L Study is just that... on steroids!

We hope all Group Centers can participate in both programs this coming year. Both are included in your Group Retainer.