While Fortune 500 companies command headlines and venture capital flows to unicorn startups, it's the small businesses that keep our world turning. The family-owned restaurants, local contractors and service providers that make up the fabric of our communities.
These aren't just businesses – they're the dreams of people who dared to build something of their own. People who know their employees' kids by name and work longer hours than anyone in a corner office.
But while big corporations throw millions at consultants, small business owners are in the trenches.
Making payroll. Managing compliance. Fighting fires with one hand while trying to grow with the other.
They don't have the luxury of massive IT departments or endless resources. They need solutions that work today, not next quarter. Tools that make sense for their budget, not their competitor's.
That's why we're here.
We believe small businesses deserve the same technological advantages as the giants. We're not here to sell you enterprise solutions you don't need – we're here to understand your business, find the real problems, and fix them with tools that make sense for you.
Because when small businesses thrive, communities prosper. When local companies grow, we all grow together.
Let's build something better together.
However, many companies default to hiring more people as soon as they hit a bottleneck, when in reality there are many other (better) ways to resolve a bottleneck than just hiring more people.
It's important principle to note that bottlenecks are caused by lack of capacity or capability. They are not caused by lack of motivation or effort.
While the people in the company may be central to a bottleneck, it is rarely helpful to put blame on individuals for what is almost always a capacity or capability issue.
We help our clients with the common bottlenecks below.
Marketing brings prospects to the door, the sales process converts them into clients. Businesses commonly report being unable to "see" what is happening in their sales process.
Some part of it is working, but which part? Keeping track of actual activities can help diagnose the different bottlenecks in a sales process.
Let's start with the obvious part of delivering any product or service.
If you don't have enough people to do the job, or the right people in the right roles - you might need to hire more people to get the job done.
This is commonly identified by team members being over-worked or stressed however you may well find that you can achieve more from your team than you think.
You might have the people, but if your people need equipment to do the job and it is at maximum capacity or frequently unavailable due to maintenance or other issues, there might be a equipment or plant bottleneck.
As equipment can be expensive, it's common to keep the existing plant and identify ways to improve utilisation via better workflows, or maintenance programs.
Businesses often underestimate the productivity gains that can be had by fixing burdensome and outdated workflows.
It is common to see companies spending tons of time on admin, paperwork and administrative staff to complete work that could be leveraged by a more efficient system or process.
Technology (or lack of technology) is also a common bottleneck. Selecting the wrong software (tech stack) can be a bottleneck that's incredibly expensive and difficult to resolve - especially if its been integrated into every nook and cranny of the business operations.
It is common to see companies under-investing on technology that could rapidly solve bottlenecks while also over-investing in expensive software that doesn't deliver the promised benefits.
Technology options should be considered when working to resolve other bottlenecks in the business.
We helped an accounting firm and their 14 staff to improve their solutions architecture and software suite (tech stack). Their existing software product was costing $5000/month in licenses and was not meeting their needs.
Moving to a more modern cloud framework better suited their needs at a fraction of the price.
We managed the analysis of the software options, vendor engagement as well as overall project management of the transition.
Company Size: 10-20 Staff
Service: Business + Tech
Timeline: 6-12 Months
We helped a construction company to save time and stress meeting their payroll each fortnight.
Their payroll team was constantly under stress trying to complete payroll with paper based timesheets.
We designed, integrated and rolled out digital tools to capture timesheet information for 180 employees and transform them into staff specific pay rates including penalty rates based on the employment agreements.
This can then be automatically uploaded into MYOB.
Payroll now takes the payroll team a few hours per fortnight instead of 3-4 days.
Company Size: 180 Staff
Service: Business + Software Development
Timeline: 3-6 Months
We helped an safety consultant company develop custom software to meet the constantly changing compliance landscape in the Australian mining, drilling and construction sectors.
We managed the development and ongoing support of a custom software package to reduce the administrative overhead of meeting compliance requirements.
This system has tracked 7,000 staff, 10,000 assets, 70,000 qualifications and 65,000 services since inception.
Company Size: 5 Staff
Service: Software Development
Timeline: Multi-Year
Our client had an opportunity to expand their product range into the digital forms space - specifically for clients with poor internet connections as is common in rural and remote areas.
We facilitated the implementation and customisation of a off-the-shelf digital forms platform to support offline data capture as well as advanced form logic.
Integrated the platform with the client's existing custom software as well as 3rd party applications like Dropbox, Sharepoint, Google Sheets, Xero.
Company Size: 5 Staff
Service: Concierge
Timeline: 3-6 Months
Our client was struggling to scale their fitness coaching business due to staff members finding it hard to coach in the same way the founders did – causing issues with customer satisfaction and retention.
We helped the client to define and map out their coaching process, so that appropriate interventions could be provided to clients at the right time.
We also supported the development of a custom software package to manage their customer check-in process as well as provide a decision support system for their coaches to support a higher volume of clients, at the same quality, with lower stress and overwhelm.
Company Size: 20 Staff
Service: Business Analysis + Software Development
Timeline: Multi-year
Our client was struggling with their workload to provide customised bloods analysis to their clients based on their personal diagnostic system.
We first developed a low cost proof of concept that their diagnostic system could be replicated digitally, then proceeded to develop a custom software solution to provide decision support on nutrition support and supplementation protocols.
Before using the system, a client analysis would take between 2-4 hours. Using the analysis platform the same analysis and reporting could be generated in 15 minutes.
Company Size: 2 Staff
Service: Swift Build + Custom Build
Timeline: 6-12 Months
Our client has over 40 years combined experience training and managing sales teams and was looking to scale that expertise to provide sales people with automated yet individualised training without the need for an expert sales trainer.
We supported the development of a custom software package to support sales people in their calling activities including script management, objection handling processes as well as common data capture to further segment and qualify leads.
This data was then used to provide daily tailored feedback to sales people and lower the training overhead for sales managers.
Over the life of the product so far, the system has tracked outcomes of 165,000 sales calls and provided 5,000 individual training guidance for sales people on the platform
Company Size: 5 Staff
Service: Business Analysis + Software Development
Timeline: Multi-year
What to charge for your services is hard to do right.
Our client, a mentor to hair salons had developed a excel sheet to take all the variables on pricing into account - but her clients were struggling to use it.
We helped them develop a more intuitive software tool that took all the variables and calculations and hid them behind a simple to use piece of software.
This greatly improved the engagement of her clients to calculate their salon prices more accurately - ultimately resulting in salons being profitable rather than losing money on services.
Company Size: 3 Staff
Service: Custom Development
Timeline: 3-6 Months
Creating high quality social media content can be incredibly intensive on founders and their team.
Our client was struggling with the overwhelm of managing all of the processes, team and quality checks to ensure that their social media was kept up to date with high quality, scientifically accurate and marketing relevant content.
We supported the development of a workflow tools to track the work all the way from idea generation through to copywriting, creative design and technical review.
We also project managed the entire team for 6 months to ensure everything was moving smoothly.
This workflow has supported the creation of over 2500 pieces of original copy
Company Size: 20 Staff
Service: Workflow Management + Marketing
Timeline: 3-6 Months
Our fashion designer client was struggling with her backlog of bespoke clothing that needed to be constructed for her luxury clients by hand.
We helped her to develop workflow tools to track every piece of clothing through every step of it's creation.
Piece ideas, design, manufacture, client feedback and quality checks were all tracked and monitored through the system.
These tools helped her get on top of her enormous backlog that was causing her a ton of stress, and enabled her to hire people to help with the garment creation and allowed her to focus more on the business itself rather than being on the tools.
Company Size: 5 Staff
Service: Concierge + Tech
Timeline: 3-6 Months
