QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT INDICATORS OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY
Business activity of an economic entity is now one of the most important factors affecting its competitiveness. The level of business activity is an important indicator which has particular relevance to potential lenders and investors without whose involvement it is often impossible to survive in competition. The purpose of the paper is to analyze existing approaches to the assessment of business activity and develop an original system of quantitative assessment of business enterprises activity. The subject field of the research is the methodology of business activity assessment. The methodological basis of the research includes scientific methods (hypothesis, analysis, abstraction, idealization, induction, deduction) and sociological methods (observation, interviews). The paper examines various approaches to the assessment of business enterprises activity, highlights their strengths and weaknesses. The main drawbacks of the existing approaches are the lack of a single set of indicators and final assessment indicator of business activity. Having eliminated the said drawbacks the author suggest an original system of quantitative indicators to measure economic activity which includes turnover rates and duration of operational and financial cycles, and puts forward a method for calculating the index of general business activity. The results and findings of the research can be applied for assessment of economic activity of industrial enterprises as evidenced by practical implementation of the developed system at three enterprises of the Saratov region.