Planning for the “What If”®

Is your company’s infrastructure operationally sound?

Many business owners prioritize revenue generating activities over other things. Why? Because it takes money to run a business and that’s their measurement of the company’s success. However, if the company isn’t prepared for this success from an operational viewpoint, the company may become a victim of its success.

Do a search for consulting services and you’ll probably find a lot of listings for sales, marketing, opportunity identification, recruiting, etc. But you probably won’t find many listings for business operations coaching and consulting. The reasons are two-fold. First, activities associated with increased revenue and are a lot more fun to do. Second, many organizations don’t realize the importance of business operations so there isn’t a perceived need for consulting and training services for it.

Think of it like this. Revenue is the roof of a house; biz ops is the foundation and the walls that the roof sits on. Your company’s business operations functions provide the foundation so you can stay in business. They also provide the support so your business is prepared and can plan for the “what if”.

Do these sound familiar?

It doesn’t matter if your business is relatively new or has been around for a while, these are some examples of what you have or will experience.

• What if your company grows faster than you anticipated?
• What if you need to open an office?
• What if you want to hire employees?
• What if you want to use independent contractors?
• What if you want to do business in another state?
• What if you need outside capital or bank financing?
• What if you want to sell your business?

These are the common ones, but by no means the only ones.

Our mission is to help you plan and be prepared for what you know and don’t know. Our goal is to help you build a strong operational foundation so you will be a solid company.

Our expertise isn’t industry specific

Many consulting firms are experts in either the revenue generating side of the house OR the business operations side. While we know and have extensive experience on both sides of an organization, our focus is business operations.

Our CEO, Diana Dibble, has been consulting for small businesses since 1996. Throughout her decades of professional experience, she’s observed that companies who have longevity and success are those with strong operational foundation. She’s spent the majority of her entrepreneurial career working with organizations to create foundational structure, including processes and procedures, in both government contracting and commercial industries.

We know how businesses work

Our expertise comes from understanding how a business operates from both the external facing (strategic planning, business development, client services) and the internal facing (business operations). Our expertise includes, but is not limited to:

• finance and accounting
  • determining where improvements can be implemented
  • developing working capital and banking relationships
• human resources and employment law
  • reviewing recruiting and onboarding processes
  • creating/updating company benefits programs
  • Implementing programs related to employee engagement
  • developing relationship with legal counsel that specializes in employment law and is familiar with company’s industry
• Insurance
  • developing relationships with brokers familiar with specific industries
• facility operations and facility security
• logistics and IT
• legal and contracts
  • developing relationship with legal counsel familiar with company’s industry
  • ensuring clients have the proper paperwork to conduct their business
  • reviewing contracts by and for the client
• policies and procedures
  • creating a standard operating procedures manual
  • identifying areas that need shoring up
• outsourced resources
  • identifying areas that can be outsources either temporarily or permanently based on company’s short- and long-term goals

360 degree view of your biz

While we have internal resources to meet our clients’ needs, we also partner with other individuals and firms as additional resources to complement our services. This allows us to provide a comprehensive offering to our clients.

Our partner firms include bankers, attorneys (business, employment, subject matter experts), accountants, sales process experts, financial and retirement planner, recruiters, and insurance brokers (business, health, life/AD&D, etc.). We stay up-to-date on industry developments and work to expand our network to ensure we have or know resources to support our client’s existing and future needs.

We are business operations experts

If business operations activities aren’t your forte, you’re not alone. Because these activities aren’t the primary focus, they are often the weak link in a business, and this can be for a variety of reasons. The business owner or executive management team:

• may not realize how important these functions are for long term business success.
• doesn’t have the time to focus on it.
• doesn’t have the expertise to know what needs to be done and how to prioritize their effort.

Compounding this is industry and entrepreneurial programs are not offering training and outside support services in business operations, particularly to small businesses.

And let’s be blunt. For most people business operations activities are not very exciting or fun. They are tedious and boring. But they can mitigate risk and potential legal action, which can be costly for a company.

Why you should engage us and next steps

Why should you engage us?

• We enjoy helping businesses lay the foundation to shore up their company’s operational functions.
• We’re really good at what we do.
• We make business operations fun (or at least as tolerable for those who’d rather being doing something else).

Next steps: Let’s talk about your pain points and how we can help. Perhaps it’s one of the “what ifs”, or something that you’ve had this on your to-do list but haven’t had time to address. Perhaps it was something triggered either in a conversation with our CEO or one of our team, or from something you read our website. Send us a note on the contact us page so we can talk next steps.