Processes and automation

What we need to learn from the "big guys"

Most of us will easily understand the difference in big business and small business. The difference is defined by the number of locations; the number of employees and the amount of revenue our business produces annually. We are likely an easy fit into the small business category.

Years ago, this writer remembers hearing a lesson about small businesses trying to be like big businesses. The story told of a small business that carefully monitored the ordering of inventory using what many of us know as the “onesie-twosie” method. It was simply ordering only enough inventory to cover your needs until the sales representative called on your business again.

The story told of the business growing to the point where the owner said, “We have made good money and have cash on hand. Now we can order like the big businesses”.

The moral explained in the lesson was asking, “Why would you work to make money performing as a small business and then decide you want to change the way you order?”

There are situations (ordering inventory is not one) in which we should make an effort to mimic a large business. The most obvious is that of having processes in the ways we do many things in our business.

Doing so means the experience our customer has is consistent, and it means that a small business with 10 employees is not doing the same job 10 different ways. It also means the owner and manager of the business is not constantly running around redoing many of the jobs in the business.

Having processes means the owner and manager can spend more of their time talking care of owner and manager responsibilities. It can also mean not putting in as many hours each week doing things that other employees should be doing.

The one word of caution about creating processes is that we do not take out the personal experience a small business can have with customers that a big business cannot. A customer of a small business hearing, “I’m sorry but our customer service policy is …”, and that customer is likely looking for somewhere else to do business. Our advantage of being small is stocking or obtaining items our customers are asking for; doing things our customers ask for; and being there to listen to our customers.

There is a closely related component where small business tries to mimic a big business; automation of processes and experiences with our businesses. Our office had the unfortunate experience of a local supplier closing their doors permanently.

While they are a bit further, we found a replacement supplier in the community. They also deliver, so there is little change in going to this new supplier. We wanted to know who we were doing business with, so we made a trip to their office. We met very nice people, including Debra who would be our contact person should we need assistance.

We thought this would be great until the time came to place our first order. The business has a phone system like many businesses; a voice recording that wants to navigate you through their system. Getting to the option of placing an order, we find another voice recording telling us we can enter a previous invoice number or item number along with the quantity needed. The options continue as we can enter “1” if we want the order delivered or, “2” if we want to pick up our order. There are other options we have as we place an order.

Surely for this vendor, they believe this is highly efficient. They know that many big businesses use phone systems like this, and there is an easy comparison to ordering from a vendor online.

There is an option where you can enter a number and get to a person, but you do have to initiate the action to talk with someone; perhaps, you would talk with Debra.

The big business, with their many customers, likely could not have it so you could meet a Debra. You likely cannot talk to any individual. That is the problem with big business.

The small business can have the opportunity to have that human interaction; they can have something the big business cannot have. Yet, like the example of ordering merchandise, the small business chooses to mimic the big business.

Our biggest advantage as a small business? It is being a small business. We need to act like a small business more often.

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