Are you looking forward?

‘And now my friend, the first rule of Italian driving. What’s a behind me is not important’.

In my opinion, this is one of the most memorable lines in the 1976 movie ‘The Gumball Rally’. It was delivered by actor Raul Julia playing ‘Franco’ as he rips off the rear-view mirror of his Ferrari and promptly discards into the back seat.

I’ve always really liked that line and whilst we should learn from history, looking forward is where we should be more focused.

So, using Franco, our esteemed Italian driver as an analogy, his rear-view mirror is no longer there to distract him. Instead he can look forward out of the windscreen and be more focussed on the road ahead and beyond.

To help support Franco’s driving he has a dashboard that will give him key information like, how fast he’s going, how much fuel he has left, the engine temperature and more. Fast forward to today and you have a lot more information at your fingertips with multi-media displays, smartphone integration and SatNav now all standard in most cars!

If we apply this analogy to running a complex business, would you be able to point to the equivalent information for your own organisation? If a rear-view mirror is some 50 times smaller than the windscreen, should we consider data in that ratio also?

Where I am going with the car analogy’s is that most organisations, we work with have great historical data to generate reports, but less visibility or forecasts for the future. Many still lack that dashboard equivalent which in our case is real time information helping to support our decisions.

In the same way we don’t (ok, shouldn’t) drive with our eyes fixed to the rear-view mirror, we shouldn’t be relying on historical data and reporting alone to drive our business forward.

We haven’t always had the tools in Aged Care to look forward as easily as we can now. If you want to understand the cost of your workforce in real-time, see the forecast for the next day, week, month or more, there are online tools to allow you to do this. In fact, this is exactly what we built Mirus Works, our workforce management tool to do.

If you want to understand the impact of subsidy claim reassessments, then you need to see how Mirus Metrics forecasting function will help you drive revenue growth.

And if you want to plan your future occupancy using the right tools to ensure the right resident at the right time, then you need to see how Mirus Admissions Companion is the only Medicare connected CRM for Aged Care that tracks revenue, funding and occupancy.

If it’s time to toss aside the rear-view mirror and look forward, then jump in to see how we can help you drive your organisation further. We already help over 100 clients to be financially sustainable. You’ll be in good company.

James Price, co-founder at Mirus Australia is a self-confessed petrol head. That is a person who is overly reliant on the use of their car and enjoys making a noise with it. James frequently shares a car analogy to explain a methodology, complex problem or an idea that has formed and with the goal of #makingagedcarebetter