Growing business and improving work flow

[Rudy90]

Hi hope to see if someone can help or something.

Maybe a few people can relate and have had similar experience.

Started my business, 23 at the time, did all office work myself. Had no prior office or business experience in what I now do. My process work simple tailored the way I wanted. Was a bit disorganized, bookkeeping on excel, etc....
Started growing, and hired family and friends with little to no experience in the positions I had.
After realizing my processes weren't gonna cut it any more, I've tried to improve things, but have little progress.

Just wondering how did you guys manage this. College taught me none of this, looking online is so broad and vague. Learning and teaching is time consuming and frustrating.
Hiring someone experienced is expensive.

Did you guys take a seminar? Class? Buy a process manual tailored specifically for your business and the positions you need? Lol...... No serious how much was it?

I'm feel lost right now, but want get things down and get corporatized to expand a lot more in the coming years. Easily going to double what we did last year. Still got 6 months for this year for improvement, which can possibly bring us close to 3X.

And also relieve some stresses, and get a bit of personal time.

[Fulcrum]

Can you tell us what type of business you have?

Earlier this year I went through a similar process. I reorganized my shop floor to reduce the distance (number of steps needed) between each step of the process. Travel distance was reduced by almost 50% by switching the placement of 2 machines and rotating a 3rd so that it sits 90* to another machine (1.5 steps from "door to door"). I'm looking at modifying one of these machines also as I need to walk around it in order to make adjustments as well as changing how (manual vs mechanical) base plate travels.

1) Always as yourself how can the process be simplified.
2a) Time how long it takes to make a part. Do the timing at each step individually.
2b) Time the full process start to finish and include travel.
3) Always be looking for continuous improvement.
4) Standardize processes and procedures where you can but don't lock yourself into only doing them that way so as to negate #3

I know our member Turboguy has written about his challenges with reducing times. You can also pick up books about lean and agile manufacturing. Though written with large assembly plants as the focus, small guys like us can still learn a lot about machine placement for improved work flow (not to mention reducing employee fatigue). I'll dig through my library later today and put a few titles up.

[Bobjob]

Hard to say. From your post I'm taking it you are having office trouble. Could you be more specific? Are multiple people answering the same emails or processing orders twice? Is filing an issue? It's debatable, but you should have filing cabinets with folders full of all information that happens in your office and with your business. I say debatable because in this age items can be scanned and put away in a computer.

Off the wall ideas...
You might hire a temp and see if they can offer any knowledge from past jobs they've had or hire someone with office management experience. If you are going to double what you did last year, hiring someone to help get you straight shouldn't be a problem. Plus you would get your monies worth since it's kinda a long term investment. I'm not an accountant and have no idea, but your business might be able to write off the expenses of hiring a consultant.

[Rudy90]

Thank you guys for the input. Sorry should have been more specific. I run a trucking business.

Everything is simple and straight forward in the business, until it comes to responsibilities and duties of employees, and new software.

I know What I work I need done, it's just the How part I need to figure out

[Bobjob]

Sounds like maybe its time to make some lists of responsibilities and duties. When the employees are not adhering to their lists, sit down with them and find out why, and try and learn from that. Don't expect perfection but try for it. I can imagine firing family or friends would be difficult.

Personally I like trucking companies. Good luck with yours.

[SmallBizOrg]

I am not sure if anybody in your current set-up has any business education but I think you should know that business schools focus on 6 areas when they teach their MBA programs: strategy, finance, marketing, operations, human resources and research and development. So you need to think of all these to take your company to the next level. creating your processes will have to start top down, from your strategic objectives (where do you want to be in 5 and 10 years i.e how many trucks you target to have, how many people, what markets will you be serving etc) and from there zoom in and think of your operations (what is a typical workflow of an order from client inquiry to taking the order to scheduling the truck and the driver, creating and sending the invoice, collecting the payments etc). Then you need to create processes to keep track of maintenance for your truck(s), keep track of people's time sheets and payments, days off etc, have some sort of customer service function etc. You may even need to develop a marketing function, to promote your business, to build a brand and trust in the marketplace. We are actually building an online application to keep track of all these functions if you are interested contact us and will give you more details.

[WebizaMedia]

You have to focus on what works and cut out what doesnt work. Start Reading Books. Also, a lot of things people think they need employees for, but they can just be outsourced or you can contract someone for them. That's the basis my business is off of. I realized people where hiring web Devs for $XXXX or $XXXXX and an "agency" to manage social media for $XXXX, so I started a business that puts together peoples online presences as an affordable rate. Most websites I make for my clients are under $699, and most social media management plans i provide are under $399 monthly. I'm not trying to sell you, but show you that theres people that have businesses like mine, that you can contract and work with, instead of hiring somebody and overpaying them. What i'm trying to tell you is that there is a lot of solutions for what you think you need employees for. Think about your high-priority tasks, and prioritize all your tasks from most important to least important, a scale from 1-10 would work. It would make it much clearer what you have to keep doing.
And as for marketing, remember, you dont pay for results / ROI, you pay for data and use that data to get results / ROI most efficiently, which is ultimately up to YOU. unless you'd like to hire a full-blown agency for $10,000 a month, most people cant do that, but even less need to do it.

[KCMDigitalMarketing]

Hi Rudy,

See what other similar companies structure themselves.

You can simply search online about different organizational structures. They all come with their pros and cons, and depending on how big your company is.

There are specific courses in college I took that focused on this type of stuff. It's based around business strategy and management.

To get a better idea of it, search organizational chart.