Growing business? Then you’ll recognise this.
Most growing businesses experience the same pattern. At first, everything works fine. Excel keeps track, the folders are tidy enough, everyone knows who does what.
Then the company grows past it.
«Things are moving fast for us and there are a lot of growing pains,» said a customer who had doubled their revenue in two years. The folder structure was rebuilt every two weeks. «We can't find the perfect model.»
You are not alone. We talk to growing businesses every week. The patterns repeat themselves.
Excel spreadsheet that became too big
It often starts with an Excel spreadsheet. For project overviews and customer lists. The tasks work fine when you have ten employees. But over time, it isn't Excel is sufficient as a project tool.
An engineering firm we met had grown from a few to many large projects. «From manual Excel spreadsheets to manual Word documents,» as they put it themselves. Document follow-up was regularly neglected. «When it
talk about up to 100 documents a week, so out.»
Another company discovered that employees had downloaded price lists and saved them to their desktops. They gave three-year-old prices to customers without anyone knowing.
Excel is a fantastic tool. It's just not a system for a growing business.
Report_FINAL_v3_NEW.docx
Everyone knows it. The file called Rapport_ENDELIG_v3_NY.docx. Next to it lies Rapport_ny_ENDELIG_v3_NY.docx. No one knows which one is current.
«You want to take care of documents, then a new version comes along that takes care of the old one, and then in the end you lose a bit of overview,» a transport company explained. «We don't need 10 variations of the same thing.»
For a growing business, the problem is multiplied. More employees, more projects, and suddenly the same document exists in ten versions. The folder structure «is from 20 years ago,» as an engineering company said when describing their own system for keeping track of folders and documents.
Knowledge walking out the door
In a small business, everyone knows everything. This works fine until someone goes on paternity leave, quits, or simply has a bad day.
«If they go on paternity leave or quit, the knowledge walks out the door with them,» said a managing director. Another admitted that: «Some individuals have a steel grip on what things are. The rest don't know how to find things anymore.»
For a growing business, this is a risk that only increases. The more employees there are, the more information exists solely in someone's head. One resignation can take with it years of client relationships and project history.
The information that remains in the inbox
Everything from customer communication to project decisions goes to private email and stays there.
«Information is shared to a small extent,» a company in the construction industry told us. Email was used as an archive system, but the archive belonged to the individual, not the company.
Another customer described the information storage as: «A bit here and there, and then some of it gets duplicated.» The same information in multiple systems, and no one knowing what has been updated.
When a company in growth relies on people remembering to share, it quickly falls apart.
Management flying blind
The general manager wants to know the status of the projects. The answers exist, but they are scattered across inboxes, Excel sheets, and the project managers' heads.
«Really, I have a dream scenario where, from sales, through projects and on to logistics and out, it's one seamlessly connected place,» a customer told us during the sales process. «Because we have something in one system, and something in another. It ends up being a bit here and there.»
Another summed up everyday life as «it's going at 150 mph.» No time to search. Only time to do.
When the management of a growing company doesn't see the bigger picture, they make decisions based on gut feeling. This works for a while. Until it doesn't anymore.
Processes that only exist on paper
Many growing businesses have documented processes. The problem is that nobody follows them.
«The map is not always the territory,» as a customer put it.
A maintenance company explained that their processes were «too manual, too cumbersome, too reliant on individuals.» They had tried to sort things out several times. Everyday life always took over.
It's not laziness. It's a growing business where the systems haven't kept up. People are reverting to what works. And what works is what they've always done.
Do you recognise growth pains?
Take a quick check that tells you exactly where your business stands on the scale of growing pains.
Growing pains are normal
Most of the companies we speak with recognise several of the situations above. For many companies, the growing pains become so great that they struggling to grow Further. Documents in private inboxes and folders slipping out. Processes only one person can handle.
Business Online is built for this. One platform where CRM, project, quality and HR are connected, on the Microsoft 365 you already use. A structure that grows with your business.
Many of our customers came to us in the middle of a growth phase. They needed information to stop disappearing between the tools they already had.
Lie Blikk grew from 60 to over 100 employees. Then the systems broke down.
Lie Blikk is a growing company that went from around NOK 100 million in turnover to almost NOK 175 million in four years. The growth was desired. The ensuing chaos was not.
«We worked in one way during the estimation phase, another way during the design phase, and a third way during execution,» says Eirik Kvilstad Heskja, Head of Digitalisation and Finance. «It was difficult to collaborate because the information was so scattered.»
They consolidated everything in Business Online. From inquiry to finished project. At the same time, they obtained three ISO certifications.
«A lot of time was spent searching for information, and being frustrated that you couldn't find it where you thought it was,» says Heskja. «The time saved by having a common space where everything is gathered is essential.»
It will pass
Growing pains feel permanent when you are in the thick of them. Ask any business that is growing. They are not. Most of the businesses we work with spend a few months putting structures in place. Afterwards, they wonder why they waited so long.
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