"Best Practices" to Maximize Profits

A Client had seven regional offices in Florida with no standard operating (“best practices”) procedures for any of the functional areas of the business. “Best Practices” is defined as the most efficient and profitable policy/procedure to be used as a standard operating procedure for all of the company-wide branches.

1) The Client’s headquarters office is in Central Florida with regional offices in several of the larger cities around the state of Florida.

2) None of the regional offices had standard operating procedures for any of the functional areas including: Sales & Marketing, Human Resources, Financial Reporting, and Customer Invoicing.

3) There was no monthly financial reporting (“accountability reporting”) for the regional offices other than their sales and payroll totals.

4) Each office was autonomous of the other offices responsible for their own sales and payroll totals, preventing each from enjoying the benefits of the other offices’ knowledge and experiences.

5) Each office had its own unique set of forms, policies and procedures that the Branch Managers would use to operate their individual branch.

6) After actual accurate financial statements were restated, only two branches were better than break-even with profits and cash flow.

A standard set of “best practices” policies, procedures, forms, goals, objectives, and budgets were developed and implemented. Within three months of implementing the new business infrastructure, policies and procedures, seven of the eight branches were both profitable and experienced positive cash flow for the first time in several years.

Weekly branch management meetings were developed to implement a vehicle for the management team to share information between them. They were then able to help each other solve common problems, compare data about customer bases, and discuss successful “best practices” within their branches to help improve sales and increase profits.