The owner stopped being the bottleneck, and the business kept growing without him in every room.
Six branches40 staffGrowing fast, informally
The situation
What we found
Every decision above a small threshold went to the owner, including approvals he had no particular insight into. Branches waited.
Stock was ordered by feel. Fast lines ran out while slow lines tied up cash on the shelf.
Attendance and shift records were kept on paper at each branch, and payroll took three days a month to assemble.
Management information arrived six weeks after month end, by which time it described a situation that had already changed.
Plan, Do, Check, Act: the smallest useful improvement loop
Four quarters. The discipline is not in the diagram — it is in actually completing the fourth quarter instead of starting something new.
Plan — Agree the change and how you will know it workedPick one thing. Write down the number you expect to move, and by how much. If you cannot name the number, you are not ready to start.
Do — Run it small, and run it for realOne department, one branch, one category. Long enough to see a pattern; small enough that being wrong costs very little.
Check — Compare what happened with what you expectedNot “did people like it” — did the number move? And if it moved, are you confident the change is why?
Act — Standardise it, or change it, or stopAll three are acceptable outcomes. Only one is not: carrying on because it was announced.
Most improvement programmes do Plan and Do enthusiastically, skip Check, and never reach Act. That is why so many changes are announced twice.
Illustrative
The method
One change at a time, finished properly.
A small business cannot run six improvement projects at once. It can run one, properly, every month — which over a year beats almost any transformation programme.
Pareto: three causes, three quarters of the problem
Every cause of delay in one service, counted and sorted. Seventeen causes were identified. Three of them account for most of the damage.
Incomplete application forms31% of delays
Waiting for a single approver26% of delays
Payment not yet confirmed18% of delays
Above this line: 75% of the delay, from three causes
Record mismatch between systems8% of delays
Applicant did not attend6% of delays
Document verification queries5% of delays
Everything else, eleven causes6% of delays
This is the cheapest analysis in consulting and the most frequently skipped. Without it, improvement effort spreads evenly across seventeen causes — and the three that matter get a seventeenth of the attention.
Illustrative
The workflow
The same service as a workflow, exceptions and all.
The weekly rhythm that replaced the owner’s inbox
This is the whole management system. It fits on one page and takes forty minutes.
1
Monday morning: six numbers land
Sales, margin, stock cover on the top lines, cash collected, staff hours, and one service measure. Automatically, before anyone asks.
No staff involvementReportingAutomatic
2
Branch managers review their own branch first
Fifteen minutes, alone, with their own numbers. They see the problem before the owner does, which changes the tone of everything after.
Branch managers
3
Forty-minute call, same time every week
One number per branch, exceptions only. Not a status update — a decision meeting.
Owner and managers
If a branch misses twice runningIt gets a visit and a specific action, rather than a general instruction to everybody.
4
Decisions are made at the level named in the delegation
The owner only sees what the one-pager says he should see.
Branch managersDelegation one-pager
5
Reorders follow the Pareto list, not habit
Top lines are protected. Slow lines need a reason.
Branch managersStock system
6
One improvement is chosen for the month
One. Run through Plan, Do, Check, Act, then either standardised or dropped.
Owner and managers
Illustrative scenario
The work
What we put in
What we put in, and in what order
Deliberately modest. An SME can absorb one change at a time, and no more.
1
Stage one
Write down who can decide what
A one-page delegation: what a branch manager can approve alone, what needs a second pair of eyes, what genuinely needs the owner. Most of the list turned out to be the first category.
Cost: one afternoon
2
Stage two
Find out which products actually matter
A Pareto analysis of six months of sales. A fifth of the lines carried most of the margin, and half of the slow lines were being reordered on habit.
3
Stage three
Count stock with a reader
UHF tags on high-value lines and a handheld reader per branch. Counting stopped being a Sunday job.
4
Stage four
Attendance that records itself
Fingerprint clock-in at each branch. Payroll assembly went from three days to an afternoon.
Payroll: 3 days to half a day
5
Stage five
Take payment properly
A1Pay for collections, so takings reconcile themselves rather than being counted twice and argued about once.
6
Stage six
One page of numbers, every Monday
Six numbers, one page, same time each week. Not a system — a habit, supported by a system.
Illustrative scenario
The result
What changed
One year later
Same owner, same six branches, more of them profitable.
Decisions requiring the ownerNearly all of them
Stock-outs on the top-selling linesWeekly
Payroll assembly3 days a month
Management figures availableSix weeks after month end
Branch managers who knew their own numbersNone
A business that could not grow beyond the owner’s working hours.
Decisions requiring the ownerThe few that genuinely need him
Stock-outs on the top-selling linesRare
Payroll assemblyHalf a day
Management figures availableEvery Monday morning
Branch managers who knew their own numbersAll six
Nothing here is sophisticated. It is simply written down and repeated.
Illustrative scenario
The technology
What each piece is actually for
The technology, in plain words
Deliberately small. An SME that buys more than it can operate has bought a problem.
A1PayCollections that reconcile themselves, so takings stop being counted twice.All six branches
UHF tags and one handheld per branchStock counted in minutes on the lines that carry the margin. Low-value lines were left alone deliberately.High-value stock
Fingerprint clock-inAttendance recorded without a supervisor writing it down, which removed the monthly payroll argument.Staff entrances
A weekly one-page reportSix numbers, automatically produced, every Monday. The least technical item on this list and the one that changed the most.Management
Illustrative scenario
About this case study.
Small & Medium Business is a fictional organisation. The situation, the figures and the outcomes are
illustrative — they show how BTS Consulting approaches a problem of this shape and
what the technology involved actually does. They are not a record of a delivered project,
and nothing here should be read as a client result.
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