The Cost of Operational Glitches in Midsized Companies

Julie Stepp recently read an article on operational meltdowns in midsized companies, and had some thoughts of her own.

Many small companies growing to the midsize level run into these issues as well.  Often the situation of one bookkeeper that knows too much and has no back up starts impacting the organization due to lack of timely financial and operational information to make business decisions.  When there is a lack of operational support I have seen clients where invoicing is delayed by several weeks.  If there is not timely invoicing there becomes a lack of cash flow and thus a snowball effect to impact other parts of the business.

I have seen clients where the focus was on sales, and due to lack of operational structure they did not have a handle on what their profit margin needed to be to cover the operational structure that had been built.  Even though they landed large projects the price did not include profit margins to sustain the business and expenses related to the growth.

When growth starts requiring additional employees, at what number of employees do you start needing assistance with the HR function?  Even with a third party payroll provider, there are many key pieces of human resource management that need to be in place to protect the company.  Such items needed include an employee manual, set procedures for employee management, benefits management, etc. These do not always need to be extensive; they need to cover the basics.

Julie Steppvhas a unique combination of expertise in financial accounting and financial system implementations and enjoys helping our clients to reach their goals.  She is an expert at implementing new systems, helping clients use existing systems better and improving processes to be more efficient.  Julie brings to our clients over 24 years of accounting and system implementation experience.