Despite economic uncertainty, we’re seeing a trend of growth for small businesses in the building supply, equipment, and distribution industries. And with a national labor shortage, employees of these companies are getting maxed out trying to keep up.
If this growth goes unmanaged, it greatly increases the amount of operational complexity and can feel overwhelming to deal with. Without figuring out how to manage this growth to enter into the next growth level, increased complexities will continue to result in unnecessary pressures and frustrations.
Sound like your company?
Recently, we’ve been talking a lot about growth barriers, challenges, and change management. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be covering some of the things you can do and resources available to help you stay ahead of growth challenges and unravel increased operational complexity. First, the importance of building deeper relationships with trusted partners – and then highlighting specific tooling that can help you reign in the chaos.
Building your team
You can utilize the people who are already in your corner by making sure you have everyone in the right seat, operating within their strengths. This will help shed light on the specific challenges you’re facing and provide a path forward. When your growing business has both the right tools and the right people in the right roles, you can make better decisions and implement changes that will help you stay ahead of your growth.
You need to know who has the expertise that can help you implement changes and set up an operational workflow that supports your company’s growth and goals. This could be big-picture operational shifts, inventory or production process improvement efforts, or evaluating productivity on individual and team levels. No matter what operational barriers you're facing – you need to know that the people you’re working with understand the challenges you're going through and have the tools to help you overcome them. This team of people likely includes both internal team members and outside partners.
Systems, Software, and … Partnership?
As you’ve used EBMS and interacted with your Account Manager and the rest of the team here, you may have heard us refer to the ‘partnership’ approach we take to ERP software. What do we mean by this? Essentially, we aim to help companies like yours with the right systems and with the advice and training you need to make the most of this tooling, enabling you to build a better business.
As your business grows and you consider what changes you need to make to keep up with it all, involving your Account Manager can help bring clarity and understanding. In these discussions, your Account Manager will be a sounding board and guide, recommending next steps for optimizing your tools and reaching your fullest potential.
Some of the companies that have leaned into their partnership have been able to get more clarity and increase visibility into their businesses with additional tooling recommendations – like SQL Mirror with Power BI dashboards that show custom reports specific to your operational workflow and decision-making process - or Inventory Forecasting to help you meet fluctuating customer demand while keeping minimal inventory for better cash flow. Depending on your goals and the resources you’re already taking advantage of, your Account Manager will make suggestions and be your advocate, aiming to support your growth.
We recently worked with a company that was experiencing frustrations with an extremely complex workflow and the inflexible tooling they had in place. They were unable to track the trends and numbers they needed to make key decisions and improvements in their manufacturing process. In addition, the outside partners they were connected with did not understand them as a company – so it made communication and finding solutions very difficult. After making some internal changes and connecting with the right outside partners, they were able to build a process that was quicker and easier. With the proper tooling in hand and a partner who understood their goals and workflow, they were able to set up dashboards to help them see the information they needed at a glance – empowering smoother production, better communication, and more clarity in their operations.
We're already in your corner.
When your business is growing at a rate that makes it hard to keep up, it's important that the people around you understand your goals, can help you uncover what’s really going on, and are able to give you a better understanding of how to address it.
“What I like best about EBMS is that it comes from the same culture I do. A small company with a strong work ethic – we seem to understand each other.” – Henry Zook, Millcreek Manufacturing
If your business is growing fast and you’re experiencing operational growing pains but aren’t sure what changes would help you keep up, talk to your Account Manager. They can help you tap into the resources and expertise here at Eagle Business Software. We are here to walk alongside you and support you through the challenges of change.
Additional Resources
- Scaling Past Small Business Growth Barriers, pt. 1 | On the Blog
- How do you know when change is necessary? | On the Blog
- Business Process Consulting
- Change Management Consulting
Janelle Lieberher is the Manager of our Account Management team here at Koble. She has worn many other hats over the years with us, but this is her favorite! She loves building relationships and finding ways to improve our client’s overall experience. When not engaging with clients or colleagues, Janelle enjoys time with her family, reading and spending time in nature.
