What is a quarterly review?

You might be wondering what you would need to do to run a quarterly review, and what one would look like for your business.

We wrote a blog at the end of 2024 outlining how to plan and run an annual review for your small business, and we’d recommend reading this to highlight the importance of assessing where your business is at and how to take it forward.

A quarterly review essentially follows the same structure as an annual review – evaluating your goals, assessing your strategies and then analysing the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

The difference between running an annual review and a quarterly review for your small business is that with a quarterly review it’s much easier to assess how you’re doing and whether you’re on track with the aims you set in your annual review, because it’s all fresh in your mind and you only have 3 months’ worth of work to look back on rather than a whole year.

Why should you conduct a quarterly review for your small business?

We’re convinced that running a quarterly review for your small business is the way to ensure effectiveness in 2025, and here’s why.

Have you ever sat down to review your business in an annual review, only to look back at the aims you set the previous year and think ‘I wish I’d remembered to prioritise that’, or ‘I’m so glad that aim wasn’t one I ended up taking forward’?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and running a quarterly review for your small business can give a bit of hindsight without having to wait 12 months before seeing where you might be deviating from your goals.

Alternatively, you might realise that some of the aims you set at the start of the year are now not as relevant as you thought they would be, and you can set alternative goals which are more aligned with the direction that your business is taking.

Then, the next time you run a quarterly review for your small business you can be assessing how effectively you’re meeting these new goals and measure your impact on a more relevant scale.

What’s key here is the importance of continuous evaluation and course correction, rather than just setting goals and waiting to see what happens.

It’s very easy as a small business owner to lose sight of the direction we’re moving in because we’re so busy working on tasks which feel more urgent – so having a quarterly review for your small business is a great way to make sure that you prioritise what’s important.

How do I run a quarterly review?

Once again, if you’re asking this question, the best answer we can give you is to read our blog about annual reviews and use these same principles to assess how well you’re doing with the aims you set three months ago.

It’s all about looking at the data and reviewing the metrics for your business to determine if the new initiatives you’ve implemented are driving the desired results that you’re aiming for.

For those of you who want to see some main points here, we’ve compiled some key elements below which will help you to plan and run a quarterly review for your small business:

• Evaluate your goals: review the goals themselves which you’re working towards – are they SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound)?
• Measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): assess your progress by using quantifiable measures to assess how well your goals are being achieved.
• Assess your strategies using a SWOT analysis: use the headings Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to analyse the status of your business at present.

One of the great benefits of conducting a quarterly review as opposed to an annual review is that you’ve got three months’ worth of business to look back on rather than a whole year, and can swiftly re-calibrate your business direction and make adjustments for the rest of the year if the results you’re seeing aren’t meeting your expectations.