One of the first tasks to perform when you assist startups is to enable them to prepare effective MIS-es through which they can measure key data. 

This information will be very important for startup CEOs when they pitch to investors and, of course, to track the health of their business. 

In India, there are a lot of people who do entry-level work around filling in data into MISes.

Many junior professionals in finance restrict themselves to bookkeeping work only and never do this work because they have not learned about it. 

This work is not difficult, and if you can learn how to do it, startup founders will find your input very valuable. 

So what is it?

A management information system is a tool by which a CEO/ manager/ team leader can review the performance data of one team (sales, marketing, operations, legal, any team you can imagine) or even the whole business for a specific period of time.

Imagine that you work for the CEO of a SAAS company. 

What are the important numbers that they would want to know and be on top of all times? 

Some examples –

• How many leads did we get this month? How many were organic leads, and how many were paid?

• How much did we spend on ad campaigns? What was the ROI?

• Which were the most effective social media channels – Google, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn? Which were the most effective ads?  

• On average, how many phone/ Zoom conversations are needed before someone buys our product?  

• What is the average cost of acquisition per customer?  

• How many agreed to renew contracts? How many customers did not renew/ cancel?

• How much revenue did we generate through referrals from existing customers? 

• What is the average revenue per customer that is being generated? 

• What is our customer satisfaction score for the month? How does it compare to the previous month’s score? 

• What is our net promoter score for the month? How does it compare to the previous month’s score?

• How long do we take to respond to a customer support ticket?

These are some examples. 

As you can imagine, such data and information need continuous tracking.

This is how a high-level MIS will look: 

How do you compare these results over time or across different regions or products?

For this, if you know the advanced features of Excel, you can also prepare charts or a dashboard as follows: 

Through this, you can prepare important metrics for all the key teams of a company – sales, marketing, finance, tech, customer support, operations, HR, etc.

You can do this for CPAs as well and assist them to grow their practice. 

Remember that to actually do such work, you also need to learn how to do this work.

So you need to have the right skills before you can get such work. 

Startups, e-commerce, cryptocurrency, and fintech are just some new areas opening up for accounting and bookkeeping professionals like you, and the US is where most of the action is.

But skilled US professionals in these high-demand, low-supply areas are hugely expensive and unaffordable for most startups and small businesses. In comparison, a similarly qualified Indian professional will do the work at a fraction of the cost, but still earn far more than fellow Indian professionals. 

Besides, serving international clients builds a track record that will be as valuable as gold in your future career.