Implementing processes is crucial as Lucy’s wedding planning business continues to grow. Flexible procedures help her adapt to changes and improve her service as she innovates. With these in place, she will have time to focus on finding new clients and providing excellent service.
As I was writing Heptagram, I realized that all these steps could be combined into one business design system, a system that I wanted to be able to share with all of you. I hope that Heptagram will be as helpful to other entrepreneurs and business leaders as it was for me.
There are several ways to organize a company; you may choose to organize by function, by business unit, which is common in larger organizations, or by using a flatter structure. Whatever model works best for your company, it’s important that the structure be intentionally designed and not just a haphazard arrangement of functions that have been organized just to get the work distributed. Every role and function in a company should be included, and nothing should be left out.
That an organization should be meticulously crafted might seem obvious to a professional who works in a well-ordered corporate structure. However, for a growing company, the complexity is immense as workloads increase. What should go where? Who should do what? These are the types of questions that a newer company is constantly confronting to make sure all the work is done well and efficiently. Often, these questions are asked when it’s too late, and a problem has arisen, such as an activity that should have been completed and wasn’t or something that wasn’t finished on time.
In 2017 our firm embarked on the biggest system implementation yet: NetSuite, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It took six very intense months to become operational, but the full implementation lasted a year because we had bugs and problems that needed to be resolved. Because NetSuite interacted with all the departments of the company, bringing the system online was going to affect everybody.
Prior to implementing NetSuite, we had a very basic accounting system; it only took care of fundamental transactions, such as bills and invoices, and it produced fixed customer statements, accounting reports, and financial statements. While it was a good system for a startup, we realized we had outgrown it.