It’s really hitting home now, for the last three years you’ve been running hard, the plant has been full, and you’ve been doing some great work. The issue though is that you haven’t grown – you’re staying at the same level in spite of all the efforts. The account acquisition and retention is a push, meaning no new net growth. It just seems stuck.
You haven’t done anything wrong, but the business probably hasn’t done anything remarkable either. One of the areas to look at is the way you do business, your business model. It was designed for a time when you were a certain size or had certain product offerings and types of clients. As things have changed, and in many cases, become far more complex, it may no longer be as relevant as it once was. It could in fact, be holding you back from the growth that you’re trying to achieve.
Potential Bottlenecks
Sometimes it’s the owner or key leader, who has built the business and is still having everything flow through them. They can become a true bottleneck. Other times it’s the leadership team that is good, but not exceptional. And something I see often is the workflow within the carpeted areas of the building. Except for those projects that are truly automated, where you have a pipe connected to your client for them to transfer files to you all day long, the way many shops process orders today is not that much different than how it was done 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. Yet, the expectations of your clients, the number of transactions, and the dollar value of each transaction has changed considerably.
Read the rest of this article on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
