■ Transitioning from a small roofing business to a larger one
■ Transitioning to a major, incorporated roofing business and going public
■ Maintaining position as a small roofer, the owner of an excellent company
■ Starting new businesses that run simultaneously with the roofing business Naturally, these goals are unique to each person, but setting goals is what will chart the road map for your success, no matter what path you choose. The main attitude that you can change in your business life is a position of pro- active, rather than re-active management. You are going somewhere with your life and you now have a reason to tighten up your business. This approach will be set against a backdrop of long-term goals and their relationship to every day tasks.
Now that you have a sense of resolve based on long-term plans that really mean something to you, it is time to look at how to put them into action. Short- term goals that guide you toward your game plan must be thought through and implemented. Figure 3.3 is an example of how a person might fill out the blank copy that you will find on the following page and on the CD.
Developing a Business Plan
Having roughed out your long-term goals and begun the short-term system for implementing them, we come back to business plans. Let’s say that you decide on the security systems consulting business shown on the sample chart, a security systems maintenance business, and to grow your contracting busi- ness. You might see a need to bring some extra capital into the picture.
A business plan is a very common tool that all types of businesses take to lenders for raising funds. Whether for the transition of a small enterprise to a larger one or the beginning of a new project, the business plan is a must when you go out to look for funds. If you are going to a lender, you will most proba- bly be required to have one. If not, it might be a good idea to do one for your- self in order to evaluate the potential for the business as a moneymaker. Don’t make it complicated. Keep it simple. Figure 3.4 shows an example of a simple plan for the security systems contractor. It could be used to grow your business or to add an ancillary business like a parts business or the maintenance arm of your company. The following table is an example of the outline of a very sim- ple plan.
Many types of information are available about business plans. There are books that will offer other formats for a simple plan. Plenty of software is available to guide you through a business plan and even print out clean pre- sentation copies. The Net has a tremendous amount of information for free.
It would be best to get help with a first business plan. The input from oth- ers will flag you on concepts that you might be missing and help you avoid costly mistakes. Take your time when you seek advice. Listen to consultants, attorneys, advisors, and advice of any type carefully, but don’t swallow any-
Short-Term Game Plan Starting Long-Term Goals Time
Goal Frame How Will I Implement the Goal
Raise profit 9 months Contact existing clients, architects, and general contractors.
from existing business by 20%
Raise profit 12 months Get contracts from the friends of existing clients, plus new architects
from existing and general contractors.
business by 20%
Raise cashflow 1 year Look for more products and hire
from online a consultant to help me get on search engines.
electronic equipment business
by 50%
Raise total 1 year Check with the bar and online for advertising my expertise.
cashflow by 10%
Short-Term Game Plan Starting Long-Term Goals Time
Goal Frame How Will I Implement the Goal?
Implementing the Business Plan
Item Notes and Information We Need Owner’s financial statement
This is found in your accounting software or with your accountant
Marketing plan
How we will get knowledge of the service out there
Goals for the new enterprise
The plans for growth and income
Management
Describe who will manage the business and their credentials
Products and services
Exact description
Market forecast
How much business is out there?
What are the financial projections
How much of the market will we capture?
thing as the gospel truth. Ask lots of questions and always try to get more than one viewpoint.
Most of the time, business plans are created to go to a lender. If you are going to move right into an ancillary business, you might not need additional funds. But you might want to be prepared in case you do end up needing an infusion of cash as you launch the work. A close look at your current business and your plans for growth will always be useful for understanding your position.
Employees Are the Heart of the Business
Once you begin to understand why you are in business, what your business means to you, and where you want to go with it, you can begin to set long-term goals and put short-term goals into place.
This proactive approach can make work much more challenging, exciting, and a whole lot more fun. If you are pursuing your natural interests, all of the challenges can blend into the process, rather than being an on-going, endless cycle of emergencies.
With the goals in place, you can take the company apart and look at every operation carefully—the key step to strong, effective management. However, no matter how diligent and effective you are, you will still be completely dependent on the people who work for you.
This is always the case; there are no exceptions—people are the heart of any business. Although the logistics are extremely important, they will not help without an effective group of people implementing your plans.
The people who work with you are entirely dependent upon your ability to be powerful as a manager. A number of management principles make a work force effective. The first is to hand the work over to the person with the least amount of duties who is capable of performing the task. The more that you are capable of delegating responsibility, the more effective your firm will run.
An often-overlooked management premise is the simpler the performance of tasks, the more smoothly the company will run. This is part of the reason that successful managers take an operation apart to see how effectively different tasks are approached. Keep all tasks as simple as possible and make it easy to perform them.
A clear example that will strike home for everyone is tools. We have all been on a job site and seen a subcontractor’s crew with a broken-down truck, old tools that are out of repair, dull drill bits, and lacking extra fasteners or parts. This type of a crew will invariably take an exponentially longer time to com- plete their work than a well-tooled, efficiently supplied group.
A very important part of this cycle is the mindset of the well-supplied crew; they are much more confident than the piece-meal crew. They don’t waste time worrying, jerry rigging, arguing, and at other pointless, ineffective activities. They mobilize at the job site and get right to work. By the end of the day, they will have achieved obvious, tangible progress—and the installation will be high quality, not in need of alteration.
In this day and age, the owner of a company can make an immense impact on staff performance by simply keeping the work as easy as possible through the use of cutting-edge technology. Tools and supplies are very important and should always be current, easy to access, and in good repair.
And now computers and other electronic devices need to be considered tools and treated like drills, saws, and any common tool. The computers and elec- tronics continue to change the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Contracting) industry at a mind-boggling rate. For example, workers stand in the middle of a room and lay out the position of a run of raceway on the walls in a building— the laser level makes the run straight and true.
Computers Are Now a Necessity
As suggested, the days of guesstimating a job’s cost and client’s bill are long past. It is no longer a humorous situation for a subcontractor to keep infor- mation on envelopes and scrap paper under the seat of the pickup or in the glove box. Bidding and competition are just too sophisticated and tight now.
In the electronic age, the security systems subcontractor needs to be com- pletely abreast of the times in order to be effective at the art of management. A one-time investment of several thousand dollars for computers, software, a laser printer, an internet connection, and the other items needed for a system, can pay for itself quickly in estimating alone.
With this new millennium, top-notch management requires computers. Estimating is only one part of the workload that computers will handle, and buying computers requires one major outlay of capital, with a relatively inex- pensive on-going upkeep.
After the purchase, they can save on your business’ largest expense, labor. A well-designed and implemented computer system can save on hiring in all parts of your business, both in the field and the office. If the computer system utilizes peripheral electronic devices like digitizers for taking off plans, and dumping the results into the estimating software automatically, the estimat- ing process can be speeded up dramatically. This use of electronics can make it possible to raise the volume of estimating while growing the size of your company. If the growth is managed with care, the volume of business can be raised to a level that will easily support more estimating staff without cramp- ing the cash flow of the business.
A great variety of activities involved with a security systems contracting business can be handled quickly, accurately, and inexpensively with the use of computers. The main criterion for choosing systems will be the tasks that you require the computers to perform and the size of your firm.
The first step in upgrading your existing systems or installing new comput- ers is to evaluate what you want the computers to do. When you begin think- ing about the process, be extravagant—if you suspect that electronic devices could streamline a task, chances are it can be done. Think all of these things
What Our Computers and Electronic Devices Should Do
Item ✓ Notes
Take-offs with a digitizer that dump the information right into the estimating software. Extend estimates automatically.
Connect with customers and vendors.
Have a database of labor and overhead costs.
Shop materials electronically.
Open an account for each job that carries through to change orders and billing. Track change orders.
Handle aged billing.
Communicate between office and field.
Print profit and loss reports for every job as it is going on.
Update schedules as they change.
Communicate from field to architect’s and general contractor’s offices.
What Our Computers and Electronic Devices Should Do
Item ✓ Notes
through and make a list of what you would really like to have computers do for your firm.
Figure 3.5 roughs out some ideas to get you started. Use the version on the CD to type in what you would like to have the software do for you. Make copies and hand them out to all of your staff. The effective manager communicates closely with staff at all times—especially when vast changes will affect their lives at work.
Select a group of people from each part of the operation: field, office, and estimating, and have them work together on a list of all of the tasks for the computers. Next, start interviewing accounting and estimating software ven- dors about their products and asking them for the names of consultants in your area.
Do not rush this process—this is the most important step in automating your office. Let your staff participate, but don’t let them take charge of automation; it is too big of a drain on productivity. Let them talk through what needs to be performed by computers and electronic devices and get it on the lists, but get a consultant to select and install the systems.
Selecting the correct consultant will make all the difference in the world. Talk with a number of them, taking your time to discuss what they all have to say. Check their references and, preferably, visit their clients and check out what the consultant has already done. The consultant can make a computer installation a pleasant experience, but they must be highly skilled and easy to work with throughout the process.
With some time and energy invested, you should be able to develop a good idea of what your staff sees computers and electronic equipment doing for you. Don’t hedge your bets at this point in the game—go all the way with ideas. Getting wild with ideas will not hurt a thing; in fact, the whole point is to streamline the workload. What is really important (we can’t emphasize it enough) is the choice of a consultant that can make things happen quickly.
Now, we will think about some of the basic ideas related to what automation does for a security contracting company. If you look at what takes place at your firm on a regular basis, you will probably realize that a good deal of your work is repeated continually. Someone calls with a potential new project. Checks come in from jobs. Problems arise in the field. Invoices go out. Payroll must be out by Friday. Invoices come in from vendors. The list of tasks that you and your staff take care of in a week’s time is long, but you will notice the repetition.
Automation can boilerplate a great many of the tasks, simplify them, and per- form them with speed and accuracy that no human being can provide. At this point, remember that the equipment, software, and consultants aren’t what really costs when it comes to electronic automation—the staff ’s time at the keyboard is what will really cost money. Time working at the computers will be a part of pay- roll and all business people know how large the payroll burden can be.
The point is that the installation of electronic equipment, like any purchase of tools is not a place to reduce costs. The more keystrokes and tweaking of the equipment that your staff is involved with after the installation, the higher the
payroll burden related to getting tasks done with computers and the less valu- able your automation efforts.
The primary tool for taking care of your list of tasks will be the software. It is the first thing to shop for and choose—the hardware should be chosen to fit the software. Your choice of software should allow your staff to work as close- ly to the way they already work as possible. Figure 3.6 can be used to inter- view software providers and consultants. Boot it up from the CD and adjust it or the blank one to suit your company. Again, the wise manager brings all of the staff in on an important project like automating the company.
Make Change a Friend, Not an Enemy
Management involves a great deal of finesse in order for it to be powerful. Any number of tasks must be delegated and they must be performed in a diligent and professional manner. Attempting to think so many business demands through at the same time can be overwhelming. It is important to break the operation down into easily comprehended components and establish routines for the expeditious execution of all of the tasks.
When one thinks of the company in components, it is much easier to devel- op techniques for taking care of business. However, after systems are put into place and running smoothly, there can be a tendency to fall back on one’s lau- rels and trust that everything will work out alright. When this type of a mind- set takes over, management often becomes rigid, unable to change, and attrition sets in—the company becomes dated, and loses market share, and the dynamics of a well-run company.
Management can count on change without reservation. Strong managers learn to thrive on change. They even instigate it. Naturally, systems are need- ed, simple, smooth methods for handling tasks, but always keep abreast of change in the marketplace, staff, and ways that current systems can be improved.
The security systems marketplace will continue to change rapidly in this new century. Low-voltage systems will become more and more centralized in buildings as a part of the building automation package. Welcome the changes and use the Net and modern tools to stay ahead. Bring your clients into the loop and offer your knowledge as a part of your service—make change an important part of your business, a challenge that keeps it fun and vital.
How Our Company Works
✓ Item Notes
Receive a request to bid. Want to enter it into the system once and not have to
reenter when the accounting trail starts.
Estimate the project. The estimator wants take-offs to be automatic, but with
a way to adjust them, a shopping list to be prepared automatically.
Estimate presentation. The software can e-mail a professional estimate directly to
the customer.
Customer accepts proposal. The job becomes an account easily.
Job progress is monitored. The software reports on progress as the job continues.
Accounting trail for job and Management reports are readily available from software.