Given the number of scandals in listed companies which are governed by boards which have oversight, it is practically impossible for investors especially retail ones to have a true picture of what is happening within a firm.

Investors take time and effort to evaluate a company before investing and then continue to track the company. However, apart from whatever information a company decides to put out and the auditor's comments on the financials it is almost impossible to get a true inside picture especially in case of the traditional sectors. And then the picture gets even more distorted in case of a sector with long cycles for sales or product development.

For example, there is little way to know of the quality systems at a B2B manufacturer until there is a significant adverse report from a regulator.

Having said this, following a company for a sufficiently long period of time, understanding the drivers of growth & margins in an industry should suffice most of the time.

Companies to an extent share data on the market and the sales pipeline but where there is little information shared is on the operational side, other than what is manadated for ESG purposes.

So the key to truly understand a company is to ask question during the investor calls on the operational metrics like cost of poor quality/ utilization% of resources and ensure that over a period of time the company you are investing is sharing that information. Consistently asking for the same information/ data points over and over, could force the company to start sharing the information voluntarily.

In a nutshell,

• Understand the value chain of the company

• Attend Investor Calls and ask questions focused on the operational aspects

• Create metrics for which you want data points

• Ask for the data on a consistent basis