Everyone (who’s not in that game) thinks that starting a company is what’s hard. It’s certainly no walk in the park, but the real trap, the bit that catches people out and sinks an otherwise solid product or service, is scaling up.
Unless you prefer luck, two keys to success in that fraught period of company growth are scalability and standardisation. Because if you have a standard approach, you can teach it. And if you can teach it, you can multiply the people doing it, remove bottlenecks, and promote growth.
How process means profit
That brings us to the focus of this blog: specifically, how using Shepherd simplifies standardization, automation, and expansion, through a system built for maximum efficiency and minimum fuss.
What better way to explore this idea than with some real-world examples from Shepherd’s own customer base? One customer used Shepherd, at first its implementation, and later its design, to automate delivery processes, and “productise” its services into coherent, definable offers to customers. Interestingly, this was not a start-up or even a scale-up.
It was 2021, and this was a well-established private company, and growth was not the goal but rather working toward an exit. Things, as it happens, did not turn out as expected.
From consistency to efficiency
With Shepherd now part of operations, paper trails became traceable, and delivery processes became uniform. This led to higher levels of discipline and consistency amongst the team dealing with the company’s clients.
A specific example of Shepherd’s influence was its implementer developing the concept of routes: the optimised path-creation for deliveries requiring the least amount of time for the most possible drop-offs or collections. It allowed Shepherd to also plot if the person is free now, but 3 hours away is the best choice when another will be free later that day, but only 30 minutes from the site. That kind of thinking alone eliminated the high cost for the company concerned.
Turning efficiency into value
It’s details like that which help explain what follows. While many Shepherd customers will come on board for the procedural benefits, this one decided it was worth the expense to increase the company’s value. Same team, same products, same revenue, yet the cost and time that comes with implementing Shepherd was a no-brainer for the greater value and appeal that would result in the eyes of potential buyers.
In and of itself, that is quite an achievement, given that many company-wide changes a firm might consider paying for can take years to pay for themselves, yet the return on this upgrade would be felt as soon as the Purchase Agreement was signed. But here comes the plot twist.
As mentioned already, the whole point of implementing Shepherd was to further increase the company’s appeal to potential buyers, allowing the owners to walk away from a company that might have lost its appeal to them. But with implementation came hands-on experience, and with that came new possibilities, new results, and new enthusiasm. Costs dropped, profits rose, morale and staff turnover both benefited. Training became easier and needed less often.
What did this mean for the company?
The thought of selling no longer seemed like a good idea. The thought of walking away from this new potential, which had previously seemed exhausted and spent, now seemed like the poorer choice. With that, the thought of walking away died, and the ambition to continue growing the business to reach the potential it now had took its place.
From a degree of disillusionment with how things were going to a level of hope for how they could change: all brought about by the advantages leveraged by Shepherd and the imagination of its team members. Of course, contemplating a sale is by no means the only criterion for choosing Shepherd, but wanting to be the best you possibly can certainly could be.
Proof through performance
One holding company that had decided to adopt Shepherd for one of the firms under its umbrella saw such noticeable improvements that they got back in touch and decided to press on with implementation for the other firms in their portfolio that work in a sector with operations Shepherd could help with. That is not the type of financial commitment an organisation with contemplate, unless they are wholly convinced of what they are buying.
In any case, the take is very similar: this type of investment opens doors that will likely stay locked far longer without. Those doors might lead to other markets, to other levels of performance, even other sectors. What is required will cost less and happen faster if the processes involved are as easy and quick as they can be.
Indeed, if you want to see what leaps in performance could come within your reach, get in touch today and ask for a demo. The odds are you, too, will look back and be glad you made that call.
