May 2021 Connections video: The summer of scale

Summer is coming in hot (pun intended), and here at Syte, this season is going to be all about scale.

We’re used to being in a position to help our privately held manufacturing company clients grow and scale their businesses — but recently we’ve found ourselves in the position of needing help with this as well. It was humbling to realize that we needed to bring in outside expertise to do it right.

In today’s 4-minute video, I talk about how this is playing out, and invite you into the summer scale conversation.

Hi there, Erin Koss, CEO at Syte Consulting Group. I can’t believe it’s May! it’s been a long winter and a wet spring here in Oregon and we here at our consulting group are really looking forward to a summer with family and friends. I hope you are as well. I want to kick off this summer with a conversation about readiness for scaling your business. This is something we talk about a lot at Syte Consulting Group because our family-owned manufacturing clients come to us and say, “We’re growing and demand is high. I just feel like we’re not in a place where we can scale effectively.”

What do I mean by scale? It’s continuing to serve an ever-increasing number of clients, customers and people that are valuable to you, your supply chain, and your partners as you grow. How do you continue to serve them in a way that is at the same level of quality, consistency and commitment that you always have and adhering to your core values along the way and keeping it all together when you’re growing rapidly. How do you do that?

It means it takes scaling and scaling. The thing that often happens for our family-owned manufacturing companies is come about September after the summer, they come to us and they say that they are ready for a new enterprise solution and ready to upgrade our technology. This can look a lot of different ways and the first thing we ask them is “Are you ready? Are your people ready? Your processes ready? Is your technology ready?”.

Often times, we all want to just jump to the finish line. I know even at Syte Consulting Group, we wanted to jump to the finish line here back in the early spring when I took on a project on behalf of our organization to grow and scale our own organization. The funny thing about that is, is with it being the thing that we help our clients with, it was difficult for me to hire outside help. It really was. I figured I got this. We can do this. This is what we do for a living, right? We help clients with this. We should be able to do it. It was really validating for me. The reality of it is, is that outside expertise when you’re trying to do something that’s out of your normal day-to-day operations and special projects, it’s really valuable to have outside help. The team that we hired to help us with our own growing and scaling initiative challenged our thinking, helped hold us accountable, and just really helped guide and move a project along that might have languished and been delayed because we have our day job also.

The combination of all of those things created a really meaningful plan and roadmap for our own organization to growing and scaling. We don’t want to get to this place where we grow and grow and grow and we can’t keep our quality and our commitment to our customers as high as it’s always been. I know that’s probably true for you as well. This summer, we’re going to have additional conversations on how to think about people, process, and technology readiness.

When you’re thinking about when you’re growing and when you’re thinking about how to dial those elements in in order to scale your organization, there’s no question that business solutions are part of that equation. You might have one that’s already working for you. You might just need to optimize the one you already have and maybe you do need a new one altogether. They are foundational for the organization and no question, they’re not going to serve you if your people, process, and technology aren’t ready to go through the process.

We’re really excited to have those conversations with you this summer. I know many of you were at various places in the process yourself as you grow and scale your own organizations. Some of you have just gotten started. Some of you are in the middle and some of you have been there, done that. I hope that all of you will take a minute and coming from your own perspective, lean into the conversation with us, ask questions, and provide input.

Tell us what you think!  We would really love for this to be a broader conversation among our network. The more outside perspectives we can bring to the table about this, the greater we can serve one another. I would love to have you part of the conversation and I hope you’re looking forward to a wonderful summer. I hope you’ll join me along the way as we take a few breaks here and there and talk about people, process and technology.

Because before we know it, September is going to hit and we’re going to be ramping up into the end of the year and looking into next year. I hope you’ll join us. Have a great day!