Business Sense: Keep Your Process Moving

By Katherine Gifford of Moraware

Working for a company in the stone industry, I’ve heard many stories on how a shop’s workflow can get tangled up in miscommunication and disorganization. While that sounds terrifying and can be very stressful, what this really means is that you’re growingAnd that’s a very, very good thing!

Oftentimes, fabricators start with a quoting problem like inconsistent pricing or losing too much time to hand drawing. Here, they would purchase CounterGo or a similar program that allows them to produce quick, professional quotes. Now you’re selling more jobs than ever because you aren’t losing business to faster shops with better looking quotes. You are that faster, better shop. Hooray!

More Quotes, More Sales, More Jobs

Once a fabricator has solved their quoting bottleneck, the ideal situation would be a bottleneck in the scheduling process. “How can a bottleneck be a positive thing?” you might ask…

Well, think of it this way – As your business grows, you’ll notice that the growing pains will move around. It’s a constant evolution. There should always be a bottleneck in your business if you want to keep growing.

Now that you’ve got all these new jobs, you could be facing multiple new bottlenecks. Is your bottleneck getting their countertops out the door? Is it miscommunication between the office and the field? Are jobs getting overlooked because of disorganized scheduling? To put it simply, you need to keep your process moving….

A New System

If keeping track of all your new jobs is your pain point, congratulations! A great way to keep up with the influx of new business is to get organized. Maybe you’ve always been organized but that same system you’ve been using doesn’t work for the new amount of growth you’re experiencing. That’s normal!

By streamlining all your job information and calendars into one place (and ditching the whiteboards and file folders), you’ll have all the information your team needs at any time with just a few clicks.

Here are some ways implementing a new system worked for other fabricators: 

We centralized the job information, allowing it to be accessible remotely. This improved our workflow by allowing all team members insight on job schedules and the amount of work. It has allowed us to access data easily for shop metrics that was often difficult and inaccurate in the past.

ANDY AT FRESH WATER STONE

The ability to establish such transparency has instilled trust in every department. Our sales team is able to see exactly where the production process is, any ongoing communication from customers, and install/service dates. Our production doesn’t miss a step and communication is fluid. This program allows us to embrace the enjoyment of our work and takes the worry out of processes.

CHRIS AT EXCEL CABINETS

Solve the bottlenecks

This is one of our favorite things to do here at Moraware. We love having a conversation with fabricators to examine ways to better their workflow and create solutions for their pain points. These conversations start with a demo of either CounterGo or Systemize depending on your business needs and basically, they never end. Your business is constantly evolving and we understand that.