Increase Spending While Maintaining Efficiency

As you go about expanding and managing your business, there will be times when you’ll necessarily need to spend more money.  It just comes with the territory.  Growth requires that you hire more employees, purchase more supplies, and maybe even lease a larger office space.  But while you’re busy trying to meet the growing demands of your customers, you may find that your efficiency is starting to suffer.  The stress of constant overtime will slow your working pace to a crawl and you may find that mix-ups occur more frequently, quality assurance goes straight out the window, and you might even start missing deadlines (a definite no-no).  So how can you ensure that your efficiency remains high and your business stays on track as you grow?  Here are a few guidelines that should help you along the way.

1. Don’t wait to hire help.  Training takes time and if you feel that your current employees are maxed out on what they can handle now (and you seem to be growing by leaps and bounds), then you really can’t hold out any longer.  Take the next step and get some new people on board to take the pressure off the ones who are working their assets off to make your company a success (you don’t want to lose them!).
2. Create a procedural manual.  One thing that will help with training is putting procedures and policies down in writing.  While there is no substitute for learning from the source, this will ensure that you don’t have to teach the same things over and over (since newbies can simply refer back to the manual with any questions).  It will also help you to know exactly what everyone in your employ is doing.
3. Streamline.  Part of creating a procedural manual is making sure that processes you have in place are themselves efficient.  Look for ways you can make everyone’s job easier by cutting out unnecessary steps or middle-men.  This sort of dead weight will not only drag down your efficiency, but over time it could tank your business (if not corrected).
4. Compartmentalize.  It’s not uncommon for most employees at a small business to wear many hats.  When you’re just starting out it’s important to minimize as much as possible to keep costs low while you’re pulling yourself out of the red.  But now that you have a little money to spend, you don’t need to burden every employee with the tasks of multiple positions.  Instead, select specialists to take on certain roles as a way to ensure that everyone is doing what they’re best at (or what they prefer).
5. Stop working, start managing.  Every ship needs a captain, and as the business owner, you’re it (whether you like it or not).  Sure, you may have started out swabbing the deck with the other sailors, but you must have known you couldn’t stay there forever.  As your business expands, it’s essential that someone be in charge, making decisions and ensuring that everyone is completing their tasks in a timely manner.  Without a captain at the helm, your ship will almost certainly sink.

Sarah Danielson writes for Morrison CHS which specializes in feed screw, change parts and builds the best products available in the container handling industry.