In multi-location businesses, performance happens on the ground. Your GMs and field operators are the ones driving revenue, managing costs, and delivering the customer experience. But most of them are doing it without the financial visibility they need. They’re managing in the dark, relying on gut feel, delayed reports, or scattered data that doesn’t tell them what’s actually happening in real time. When leadership sees inconsistent results across locations, they chalk it up to people problems. But it very well could be a systems or process issue.
The Problem: No Visibility, No Ownership
When field teams can’t see their numbers, they can’t control them. They don’t know if they’re pacing ahead or falling behind. They don’t catch issues until it’s too late. Ask a location manager about labor last week or whether they’re on track to hit their margin goal, and you’ll get a rough guess or a number pulled from a spreadsheet that’s two weeks old.
Without timely, accurate, and accessible reporting, operators are stuck reacting. They miss early signals and can’t make proactive data-driven decisions. Leadership gets stuck trying to enforce accountability without giving people the tools to succeed. The result: performance gaps, missed targets, and a constant firefight – people scrambling to fix things that should have been obvious weeks earlier.
The Cause: Broken Financial Infrastructure
The root issue is often infrastructure. Most finance teams build systems for accountants, not operators. Reporting is too slow, too complex, or too inconsistent to be useful at the unit level. Managers just turn to what they know in the field. Dashboards don’t exist, or they aren’t tied to KPIs field teams actually control. If the company has them, metrics are siloed, benchmarking is absent, and data is shared after the fact when it’s no longer actionable.
Corporate is frustrated by uneven performance. The field is overwhelmed or disengaged. Everyone’s working hard, but no one has clarity. Without shared visibility, you’re left managing on instinct. And that doesn’t scale, and it certainly isn’t efficient.
The Fix: Infrastructure Built for Operators
Solving this starts with a mindset shift. Finance isn’t just a back-office function. It’s an operating system. And the field needs access. That means building financial infrastructure that gives operators the real numbers they need to run the business, presented in a way that is easily digestible. The fix looks like this:
- Weekly dashboards that surface trends and red flags in real time
- Simple, standardized reporting across all locations
- KPIs tied directly to what operators can influence
- Benchmarks that show where each unit stands and why
When operators can see their numbers, they start owning them. They make smarter decisions faster. They flag issues before they become problems. Managers start performing like business owners. If your team is flying blind, you don’t need more pressure. You need better systems. Visibility drives accountability. Accountability drives performance.
Cameron Vitter
Senior Associate