Is your business dependent on you?

 

Huzeifah is the CEO of a packaging business. His father, Imtiyaz, started this business when Huzeifah was just a small boy. A few years ago, his father put Huzeifah in charge of the business.

There were around 40 employees working for them. They owned a store, a back office, and a few warehouses.

Huzeifah wants to build on the success so far. For the past 40 years his father did well, starting off from a humble shop in Pettah, to what they had now, but the business stayed just that: a business.

In this Era, where technology kept disrupting established businesses, Huzeifah knew that a business either adapted with the times or got left back, or worse, became redundant.

Not only was the business behind in terms of innovation, it was yet to function efficiently – like a company.

The staff, knowing that it was a ‘family’ business, treated their employment like working with a kade mudalali. No one came to work dressed like a professional. Some wore sandals on rainy days.

Samples and inventory were strewn about the office like they were expected to vanish magically. Finding out exactly, or reliably, how much stock they had at a given time was a guessing game.

Human Resources was only about paying employee salaries.

Orders and shipments were handled by Huzeifah and Imtiyaz, alone. Finding new customers were also their responsibility. Making sure payments were made and received on time, were also their responsibility.

In short, father and son were basically doing every job (title) you could think of except that of the ‘CEO’ – mapping out and guiding the business ahead.

This meant that both Huzeifah and his father were basically working IN the business, putting out operational fires and trying their best to make sure that there’s a business at the end of the day.

While this was the case, Huzeifah still had dreams for the business, and where he wanted to take it. This started with restructuring the business into a company.

He needed to systemize the operations of the business so that his 40 or so employees are doing what they were hired to do, leaving him the time and energy to work ON the business.

Using his contacts, he was able to find a management consulting firm to come in and do just that.

The 1st thing that was implemented, was the HR system. Immediately, Huzeifah began to see a noticeable difference in his staff and overall productivity. People came to work on time, dressed professionally, and followed protocol for things like applying for leave.

Next, Operations and Finance were mapped out and redesigned to reduce inefficiencies and improve workflow speed. Now, finding out how much stock was in inventory was only matter of a few seconds. The existing employees were reassigned to new roles and given clear specific responsibilities. In addition, each department had a large flowchart mapping out the processes each role was responsible for and who they were accountable to. This meant that finger pointing fell to an all-time low and task completion was at an all-time high.

Huzeifah, nor Imtiyaz, didn’t need to worry about accounts receivables or payables, anymore. Accounts reconciliation was done then and there, and they could easily stay on top of things using their ERP software provided by the consulting firm.

They had regular meetings with the respective heads of each department to keep them abreast of how the company was doing. Not that they needed to, but this reminded their employees that they still had to report to them.

In just 10 months, the entire business was systemized and an Operations Manual drafted, and they were trained on how to train their employees to run the systems.

Towards the end, both Huzeifah and Imtiyaz found the experience of not having much to do at office a little strange. But they soon got over that, and focused all their energies on growing and expanding their company.

Ant & Bee Stories can help you to create a systems-dependent business, which includes an Operations Manual. Check out how we do this. Or Contact us if you want it already.

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