I remember in one office environment I worked in, the sales team were handling sales calls over the phone while manually writing notes on a pen and paper.
Classic, old skool however you may call it. But risky because that’s where most of the note takings happened…including financial information. Some of them then transferred to the CRM. Others started to pile up around the desk, making it difficult to find and source the important insights that was specific to one.
It’s not like it was a structured note-taking practice. It was sporadic, chaotic and very careless when sensitive customer details where written down. Meanwhile, the customers were none the wiser; enjoying the service that they have paid for, not knowing the chaos that happened in the background to make it happen.
And all of this could have easily been prevented.
It’s the classic swans kicking frantically underneath the surface of the water while gliding smoothly. But unlike swans, we have the capability a smoother operations in the background and create even better quality of output for the customers. You can do all of this while also creating a sense of calm and structure throughout the process without the need to waste time and cognitive energy finding, sorting, tidying and disposing of the data.
What your front of the house and back of the house could look like
Front of house is the work: the photographs, the website, the service, the product, the people. It’s essentially what your customers can see, touch and use as a result of paying for it or about to pay for it.
The back of house is everything that surrounds it that makes it happen: where the files live, which email address it comes from, what tool is used, who handled the tasks, whether the invoice has terms on it, whether anyone else could pick it up if you were ill, when payment has not been made, when someone has made a complaint.
Most small businesses have a large distance between the two. And it’s not because the owner is careless or didn’t care. But because only one of them earns money in the short term, whereas the other one is seen as a long term project that takes up time and is often not seen as an important task unless a major setback happens.
Why the gap exists
The gap that exists between the front and back of the house has nothing to do with competence, but rather sequencing problem. During the early years or the scaling stage, the time was spent on doing the work, being great at it and providing that to the customers. Because that is what pays the bill, keeping customers happen and how you build you reputation. It is rarely because of the process in place. And all the boring admin stuff were then done at 9pm in the evening after the close sign is put up. At the time, it made sense. It was necessary. But over time, it just quietly became permanent.
Most business owners will feel that the better you got at the work, the more work arrived, and the less time there was to build the thing that should have grown alongside it. It’s a very natural feeling. Heck, I often feel like that.
The five moments where the gap becomes visible
There are endless gaps that exists within a business operations that, and the wider it goes, the bigger the consequence that can interrupt your business.
But I would split them in five specific moments that could happen in a business:
1. Those moments a client creates
- When it’s time to send a contract, you either put together a document is roughly put together, barely updated or looked at properly.
- When you ask someone if “you can resend that again” since you can’t find an important document it’s in someone’s personal drive, unstructured Google Drive or in an email chain that is hard to find.
- When you are trying to the login details for an account or ask if two-factor authentication on has been applied, and you realise the honest answer is “some of them”.
- When you’ve done the handover, but when a client asks for the raw files, the source document or the account access at the end of a project, it takes hours/days/weeks to find out where everything lives.
2. Those moments a partner, supplier or stockist creates
- When a large client tells you their finance team needs a PO number and a supplier onboarding form…but you hvae never encountered either of them before.
- When you receive a wholesale enquiry and the shop asks for your trade terms, minimum order and lead times. You end up writing it out from scratch, differently every time.
- When you have deal with a venue, they ask for proof of public liability or professional indemnity cover. But you ended up having to check whether the policy is still live.
- When a supplier changes their pricing but you missed it because it went to a group inbox that nobody triages.
3. Those moments an institution creates
- When you opened a bank account, you then mixed up your personal and business expenses, which then meant your transactions includes SaaS subscription and your weekly grocery shopping.
- When your accountant asks for “simple” questions, like a copy of your recent expenses or you have sent them a bank account that includes, yes that’s right, the SaaS subscription and your grocery shopping.
- When you don’t have access the important accounts, which means you lose access to an online platform or not able to access an email address that is no longer used because that person has left years ago.
- When someone has exercised their right to a data request, but you don’t have a process for it and the response rate varies on whether anyone remembers how to do it or not.
4. Those moments another person creates
- When you bring on your first freelancer, they spend most of the time asking you questions because nothing is written down and you have to do all the answering.
- When you go on holiday and the business goes with you because nothing can be picked up without you needing to be on the phone and laptop all the time.
- When you or someone else calls in sick and nobody is prepared for it. Cue mad panic!
- When an associate leaves and they take their client relationship with you because the relationship lived in their inbox and not in your business.
5. Those moments nobody sees 😱
- When you spend your evenings or your Sundays doing admin because there’s no other time for it, and you still start on Monday morning behind.
- When a bunch of subscriptions are still taking money out of your account even though it’s not being used. But you haven’t made the time to do a subscription audit.
- When you are undercharging because you are pricing based on memory rather than an official process.
- When you have lost a lead that could have been your new client after finding a message from many weeks ago, intending to reply, but you never got round to.
What can you do about it?
There are sets of questions that you could ask yourself. Luckily for you, there is already a Digital Operations Health Check that you can download and ask yourself the important questions on how your back of the house is running.
It will look at areas such as your digital setup, how your business operates, your current processes and how your admin is managed. And you can complete that in just 10 minutes.
You might wonder whether it’s even worth sprucing up the back of the house. After all, if the output is happening, is there a need to put the extra effort to tidy up the operations?
But having a tidy back of the house is not about looking professional and being proud of it. It’s about preventing the work from stopping the work.
When everything has its place, the processes are written down, the invoices are going on time, someone else can follow up the lead, you are asked less questions, (the list can go on), the business no longer depends on your presence or what’s on your head. And as a result, you have more time and energy on the right areas of the business, giving you more time to do what’s worth doing.
And that can be within the business and in your personal life.
