Landscape Management, October 2013

REVIEW AND ANALYZE At some point in a companys growth its imperative for leadership to separate financial functions and production sales support functions One approach for unraveling this puzzle is to review the role of your support staff and to do a task time analysis of all work being completed This exercise will reveal exactly what each staffer is doing and how much time theyre spending on each task Task time analysis comprises listing each task and estimating the time required to complete it For example payroll may take four hours each week If there are 30 people involved payroll processing takes about eight minutes per person per week Knowing this will help us understand what it will take if there are 40 people and what other responsibilities the payroll person has time for Doing this analysis may require timing certain activities it will typically reveal a combination of inefficiencies and opportunities Lead Run Grow THIS MELDING OF SUPPORT ROLES EVENTUALLY CAN LEAD TO AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF BLURRED ACCOUNTABILITY AND DISCONNECTED TASKS THAT BECOME ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE EFFICIENTLY Once these have been identified list exactly what all the key functions are invoicing payables payroll new job setup etc Next map the way youre processing these key functions Mapping means drawing a chart of how the process takes place who does what and how Mapping existing process flow is an effective way to identify points of waste and opportunities for improvement Begin eliminating waste and creating efficiencies by remapping the functions Eliminate as many connection points and tasks as possible Often the current owners of the processes struggle to see the redundant or inefficient steps in it A nonbiased but knowledgeable third party may be needed to facilitate the process and encourage people to let go of certain tasks because its always been done that way or because they feel a threat Planning pointer 78 BUSINESS PLANNER 2014 continued from page 76 LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET OCTOBER 2013 or loss of power when responsibilities are reorganized The key is to seek the most efficient flow for every process and identify a way to make processes measurable DOCUMENT TRAIN AND MONITOR Once processes have been remapped they need to be documented trained and monitored The benefits of efficient well documented processes are increased efficiency and capacity increased accuracy and ease of onboarding and training of new employees Once youve redesigned and documented your key processes its easier to manage hold accountable and right size the support team You also can assess the abilities of your people more easily to determine if you have the right person in the right seat Once you have a baseline for how long each task should take you can set staffing levels more realistically At certain growth points it becomes important to increase financial oversight and recognize and separate the administrative responsibilities This is accomplished by establishing the accounting controller position and the contract administrator position The controller is a higher level accounting and finance executive who can manage all accounting and finance responsibilities and staff as well as perform higher level financial analysis budgeting forecasting and cash flow management The contract administrator position is key to breaking off many of the administrative tasks associated with production away from the accounting and finance area The contract administrator typically reports to the operations manager not the controller and acts a bridge between operations and finance His role is to support operations and facilitate information flow to and from accounting If there are multiple divisions e g maintenance and construction there may be a need for a contract administrator in each division based on the size of each division Establishing these key positions along with the development of clear processes will help structure and simplify your office making it more manageable measurable and accountable which will allow you to do more with less So how many support staff are required While this varies by business type size and market area as a company reaches maturity a reasonable average is one staffer for every 17 million to 23 million LM Thomas is principal of Atlanta based Envisor Consulting which provides professional business and landscape consulting services Reach him at 404 987 2499 Like any other hiring decisions the hiring of office and support staff should be related to company size and number of tasks On the finance support side staff size is related closely to the number of transactions and employees On the production sales support side its tied to the volume of calls and jobs or number of customers PHOTO ISTOCK INTERNATIONAL INC