In this post we’re going to take a look at the top 10 tips we’ve gathered from Joinery businesses on how to best run a successful business.
1. Find the right people
Finding the right people is essential to running a successful and profitable business. Try and find people who are motivated to achieve their best and provide an environment where they can do their best work. Make sure everyone is working with a clear vision and towards the same goals.
2. Put some procedures in place
Now that you have the right team who you can trust, you can work on putting some useful procedures in place. Make sure the team knows the correct procedures for placing purchase orders, sending work to the CNC and so on. This makes everything flow a lot smoother and causes far fewer issues day to day, meaning you have more time to expand the business.
3. Find somebody who knows the product, industry, and is awesome at sales
To help get new clients and make more sales with existing clients, you want somebody who knows the industry from start to end. Ideally they are great at sales and talking the talk as well. Being able to chat easily to clients, whilst knowing what they are talking about is a huge help.
4. Get accurate and fast estimating software
Get the best joinery estimating software you can. Price isn’t always indicative of the capability of product. There are some high-priced estimating suites that may work well for huge engineering projects like buildings and civil, but don’t work easily for joinery. Speed of quoting and getting back to your client every time with the right price is crucial. Find something that is simple whilst being very flexible.
If you’re looking for software like this, Acrual is estimating software in the cloud. It is fast, accurate and flexible. Check it out here.
5. Store all job information in one location
Creating a central handover job folder either on your own server or in the cloud (Dropbox, Box etc) is crucial. Make sure it has the correct information in it so no one needs to waste time looking for information. This also means nothing goes missing as all documents should be going to one place only.
6. Find a great production manager
Have a great production manager that can multi task and take on any problems thrown at them. With this person and the correct procedures in place, you can scale your workload to new heights.
7. Make sure you have good CAD staff
Having good CAD staff that can get through the workload and get the jobs to the CNC machine correctly and fast is crucial to growing your business. Without the CNC work getting done fast and accurately, you will have a bottleneck, either waiting for jobs to be completed, or fixing past mistakes.
8. Have the right machinery
Buy the right machinery to ensure it is making the maximum return on investment and increasing productivity. A CNC that is compatible with your drawing software is a huge advantage as you can send straight from the drawing package to the machine. This means the machine operators can load up the jobs, instead of manually entering them in which can take forever, and also be prone to mistakes.
9. Have good trades people
You need to have good trades people on the factory floor to minimise mistakes and maximise productivity. People who are self motivated and take care in their work are great for this job.
10. Make sure the fitters are right
The fitters are the final piece of most jobs so it is important to have this area under good quality control. If the fitters aren’t doing work that is up to scratch, this will reflect on your business as a whole. Putting them on a box rate (paid per cabinet fitted, instead of hourly) so you can control the cost of the job based off how many cabinets the estimator has allowed for in the project helps make sure this area comes in profitable every time.
Summing up
We hope this list has helped to identify the main areas where Joinery businesses can improve in general, and maybe helped to find some areas you can improve in your own business.
If you feel like taking a step in the right direction with your estimating, give Acrual estimating software a go. It is fast, accurate and flexible. Check it out here.