This is a cathartic exercise, baring my business troubles from the last 2 years to my local small business community.
I wanted to share the pain but also encourage change in business operations for their survival.
We are a 40 year old industrial cleaning company distributing across the UK with a turn over of over £18 million.
The Company moto above the main entrance door to our premises hasn’t change since my late father created the company back in 1979
“If you do what you always done your gunna get what you always got”
And with the stratospheric growth of the younger faster generation, desperate to do business with us, we knew we were so behind the curve it was embarrassing.
We had lost over 20% of our contracts in 9 months.
Top heavy with administration, dated computers running spread sheets and word documents all cobbled together inside a telephone system we none of us had ever figured out.
You have to let go of the stuff that used to be important but no longer is.
So embarrassing in fact, the bust up inside our family business has been excruciating but unfortunately necessary.
Each department has been power washed, scrubbed with a nailbrush and desanitised !
Every Monday for 2 months I held “Starter, bumper, shaker, mover, let go day today, cat amongst the pigeons, out with the old in with the new, repaint, rethink and push the envelope of change” days.
The changes are astonishing but logical.
And all consequential, just part of the journey of change.
The staff age group that took to the challenge are dramatically more dynamic.
We moved to our own App based ordering system for clients.
No more paper invoicing, in fact no paper anything!
No telephones in the office, all replaced with an APP based system.
Adopted a Cloud based management system we calibrated ourselves in just 2 days!
The only thing that is recognisable from the brand of old is the brochure and even that is completely Smartphone enabled !
Tom Rice is guest speaker for online Events associated with the FSB and this article is distributed by Newswire. June 21 2021
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