Client

The client is a small and rapidly growing business, selling primarily petrol power tools, including a leading brand, and has a repair and maintenance workshop.

The brief

The client first contacted Glide seeking marketing assistance. At the initial interview, it was apparent that the most urgent need was to improve management and operational processes to improve profitability, rather than try immediately to increase sales.

The owner identified two key problems:

• The business was growing fast, creating a workload beyond the reasonable capacity of the owners.
• The workshop, whilst constantly busy, was not generating a profit for the owners.

The owners also felt their skills in staff management were inadequate.

Goals of the project

We identified a series of goals:

• Recommend a business and management structure that would allow the owners to reduce their workload.
• Review the capacity of existing staff to take on more responsibility.
• Review workshop operations and make recommendations for improvements.
• Set up staff management procedures that improve their skills.
• Manage the process of implementing the recommended changes.
• Provide mentor support to the owners in dealing with the changes in their business.

What we did

Vision

The first step was to work with the owners to develop a clearly stated vision for the future of the company. As part of this, we established simple goals to guide development and identified strengths that the business could build on and weaknesses that had to be overcome.

This crucial step set the direction for the business and the project and formed the basis of all planning and decisions.

Workshop review

As part of the workshop review, we talked individually to all staff and the owners, probing different information about barriers to profits, missed opportunities, and suggestions for improvements. From this review, clear strategies emerged to lift profitability.

Management structure

We proposed a structure that would place responsibility for workshop management with a key staff member. This structure created a back up to the owners so that they could take time off feeling confident the business would remain healthy in their absence.

An essential part of this confidence was to identify key performance indicators that give the owners quick feedback about workshop productivity, without them being involved in day to day management.

Implementation

We helped the owners to put the new structure in place, to negotiate changes with the staff, to create a plan, with timelines, for improvements in the workshop, and to ensure regular monitoring and review of progress.

Results

After three months of beginning the review and making changes, the business had:

• Improved workshop output from a significant monthly loss, to break even.
• Doubled the number of billable hours from the workshop.
• Managed a holiday for the owner – the first in six years!