Growing Into the Future

Most companies while they're growing hit a point where their expansion costs are bigger than their revenues for a period of time but they have to spend the money to grow the revenues. A classic book about this challenge is No Man's Land (What to Do When Your Company is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big) by Doug Tatum. You need to grow or your company will stay small or die, but you have to spend the money ahead of the revenues. As Tatum says "Entrepreneurs recognize it because they feel like they're losing control, and the old levers that they used to pull to move the business forward don't work anymore. It';s something every company has to go through in order to grow to scale. It's a highly fatal transition and many companies don't make it".

Increase Automation

One of the key challenges at this point is to ensure that as much as possible the money being spent is short term and does not lead to increased fixed costs at the higher level.  This can be done through leveraging automation and technology because the most common causes of increased fixed costs over the long term is staffing, an area where technology is ideally suited to reducing costs.  This is often done through automating back end processing in scheduling, in sharing information, in managing production and delivery, in processing sales and in determining ROI in different departments within the company.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

In addition, the right systems help the entrepreneur and company ensure that customer satisfaction levels are maintained without excessive staff time. Examples include online help systems, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems to allow for effective communications, online survey tools and interactive websites.

Open Box helps companies develop the systems that will let them scale exponentially without increasing ongoing fixed costs.

Franchise Specific Fixed Cost Challenges:

Many franchises find themselves at a point where they need more head office staff to support franchise expansion. The problem is that every extra person adds a long-term fixed cost to the bottom line. If some of the service delivery & new franchisee training and even franchisee attraction can be automated, then the franchise can grow in a much more cost effective way while increasing the satisfaction levels of new and existing franchisees.

Contact us today to start talking about your business needs and we will help you put together a realistic plan that helps your business take flight but includes the risk analysis and the ROI calculations.