Data and Process. These areas are more dependent on good MANAGEMENT, which was in short supply for us.
When we started EOS we were around $3MM-$4MM and had been there for a while. We wanted to grow but didn't know how. We knew that in order to grow we needed scalable processes and systems. That's what attracted us to EOS in the first place.
When it came to data, we weren't collecting much. The stuff that we thought would be meaningful to track wasn't easily accessible. The result was that we had to "settle" for numbers that were easily gettable. This was hard. DEFINING the numbers is a challenge. Especially when you're dealing with human-reported numbers. And a lot of what we decided to track turned out not to be meaningful.
Process was similar. We didn't have any written procedures to speak of. Extracting the tribal knowledge that ran our business was hard. And it's difficult to document what you're doing rather than what you think you should be doing. A challenge here is that there are some processes that are critical but don't get run often enough to have an established way you do it. Those are almost impossible to document.
In both cases, it takes good management to make it stick. And I see that the entire reason a lot of companies start EOS at all is because they don't have great management.