As your business becomes more successful, there’s a good chance it gets bigger. More staff, more technology, maybe even multiple locations. But with all that growth and development, your company can become a difficult boat to steer. Because through all of that growth, development, and success, if you don’t keep your business processes in step, you’re going to be facing a difficult situation when the next big transition occurs.

Have a plan before you need one

When business is good and you feel like you’re in a groove, it’s natural to take big steps to improve how you conduct your business. This can result in a big staffing push, new office or technology purchases, or even a new location to expand your impact in another community.

And while all of those milestones are great and on some level necessary, if you don’t have a reliable, established and well-followed business process for each of them, you’re setting yourself up for problems later on.

The notion is pretty simple: have a business process to follow before you actually need it. Have a hiring process before you begin hiring. A new technology implementation process before you purchase a new solution. On and on.

Find the right staff the first time

Let’s start by examining a reliable business process for a staffing push.

Say you hire six new employees and they are the perfect fit culturally for your business. But you’re hiring for new positions that don’t have well-established job duties, training, education or management. 

Without those business processes in place, you’re actually causing a large disruption to your business with a significantly delayed payoff. It can take longer to have those new hires operating at 100% proficiency. Or it can increase attrition rates.

Either way, you stand to lose money and time.

With a hiring process that lays out every step from resume culling to employee onboarding, your new hires can hit that 100% proficiency rate quicker and start giving back positive ROI.

Things that we’ve found are helpful to include in your hiring process:

• Specific resume requirements
• A phone interview
• In-person interviews for the best phone interviewees
• Standard question list with the types of answers you’re looking for
• Office tour
• Skill assessments
• IT onboarding for the hardware/software they will be using

Be prepared to utilize new technology from the jump

Technology purchases are a near-constant for developing businesses. It can be anything from a new set of laptops for your sales team to a hybrid cloud infrastructure complete with SDWAN networking to keep your multiple locations connected and operating.

All that is to say that your IT is more than a little important to your business.

That’s why you need to have dedicated business processes for IT. These processes should include:

• Overall IT strategy and budget
• A schedule for assessments
• Staff questionnaires to assess the technology adoption of the office
• A plan for new solution assessments
• Implementation strategies and processes for new software and hardware

What’s nice about IT specifically is that you can find a managed IT partner to do most of these things for you. Because who doesn’t love a shortcut?

A great managed IT partner will be able to handle any assessments, strategy and solution management. They can also provide any training your staff would need for new solutions. They really should be your one-stop-shop for all things IT.

Ensure your new office is set up and ready to go

Hitting that milestone of a second location or a big office move is a great thing. It carries that excitement of a big purchase with that fresh new place smell.

But damn it is a pain in the neck to get a new location up and going.

Well, guess what? Having a business process for your move can make your life a whole lot easier.

Finding the right location is a complicated endeavor. Location, price, nearness to your staff — all of these are important considerations. But while your weighing all of those things, be sure to consider basic technology requirements.

For instance, can your location get access to the high-speed internet your business needs? Is the location already networked for connectivity or would you have to build that out?

The answers to those questions can have a huge impact on the timeline of your move as well as the bottom line.

It’s important that you have a qualified third party assess the locations you’re considering so they can give you input on the networking needs and overall ease of connectivity.  A trusted IT consultant or your managed IT provider can be invaluable for these questions.

You don’t need to tackle these transitions alone

Find people you can trust to help you with these big transitions. Business partners, staff members, trusted providers — all of these people have knowledge and skills you can leverage to help smooth out the rough spots.

And if you need someone to help with the technology questions, KME has your back. We’ve helped countless businesses navigate big transitions and we enjoy a new challenge.

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