How Benjamin Sayers created Ecommerce Business Processes which enables his Online Store to generate over $20 Million Annually!

Owen: Hi, everyone. My name is Owen McGab Enaohwo. And welcome to Process Breakdown Podcast where I bring on successful entrepreneurs to reveal how they were able to create systems and processes for their businesses which now enabled them to literally run their business on autopilot without their constant involvement. And today my guest is Ben Sayers, the CEO of Voice over IP Supply. Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Owen: So let’s get started by you telling the viewers what exactly does your company do and what big pain do you saw for your customers?

Ben: Sure. Voice Supply was online retailer for the most part, small and medium business IP calling systems. So the problems that we typically face when customers call in and said, “It’s not a very simple technology” and they’re looking to replace their existing phone system or looking to implement a new phone system and because it’s relatively complex, there’s a lot of questions to be asked about features and functions and compatibility and configuration for our staff to be knowledgeable enough to ask the right questions and find out what issues they’re trying to resolve through their phone system and then put the right pieces together and get the most solution that works for them.

Owen: So basically you guys value what their needs are and then you show them the right systems, Voice over IP Systems that would perfectly meet their needs. Is that what I’m hearing from that?

Ben: Yeah. That’s correct.

Owen: Okay. And one of the things we try and do is let the viewers know the level of business that you’re doing. So how many full-time employees you currently have?

Ben: 32.

Owen: And if you can tell us, what was your last year’s annual revenue or maybe what you expect for this year?

Ben: Last year was roughly $23,000,000 and this year we expect it to be around $24,500,000.

Owen: Okay. So definitely now we shared with the viewers so they know that this is real business making and real money. And this is because you described that you systematized your business and we want to go back to the very beginning, what would you say would be one of the lowest points in your business and describe how bad it got.

Ben: Sure. Well, there were two of them. The first real low point happened in 2006 and for us, we were a very rapidly expanding small business in 2005, 2006 and 2007, we were growing a triple digit growth. And a lot of things kind of stop by the wait side in an effort to really just keep up with demand and take care of customers and work with. At the time that we had was very inefficient systems and process within the organization. And fortunately the area that fell further behind was our accounting department. I mean, that was coupled with the wrong software, the wrong people and the lack of systems and processes within that department. So we found ourselves in a situation at the end of 2006 where we need to revise our tax return basically because instead of making several hundred thousand dollars, we actually lost up over a hundred thousand dollars and now it was pointed out to us after we brought in 4 or 5 outsourced CFO Level Executives to come in and evaluate what could happen and fix it and put the right systems and processes in place and put the right people in place and basically clean up what had been 3 years of poorly documented transactions basically.

Owen: And so you said the first one was in the finance department. What other place did you have issues with back at the lowest point?

Ben: Other issues are really just the general process. Our business is relatively simple. A customer calls and they have questions and we answer them and we put it in a quote to an order, an invoice and we order the clip in and we ship it out to them. So there’s a lot of areas, stuffs that go on in that process and were all documented, they weren’t very well evaluated from a simplicity and efficiency standpoints. There was some double entry, there was a lot of wasted time. Things could fall to the cracks because they weren’t well defined and at the phase that we were going, it was pretty easy for things to get lost in the shuffle and will fall into the cracks.

Owen: And I’m curious when you started, was it initially just only you when you started?

Ben: Yeah. It’s just me.

Owen: And so I guess you decided you want to hire employees but even when you hire employees, did you also adopt and start systematizing the business or it wasn’t on until 2005 as you mentioned?

Ben: It didn’t come really until later because at that point from a start of standpoint when it was just me, it was just me. I did everything that’s needed to get done and no one else to hold accountable. And the next step of growth was a sales team, not an infrastructure support team. So really, they’re just piling more and more work from a paperwork standpoint and hiring more sales people brought me. We didn’t have the infrastructure team to handle the accounting and the shipping and the purchasing and receiving and all of the different aspects of the business. And that’s kind of a step that the business goes through from that start-up to craziness to take a step back and think what’s going on and bring in the right people to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes basically.

Owen: So I guess maybe I should in the finance step-by-step what you did at the point where you realized that you need to systematize your business. If you can walk us back to what you did so that the listeners can understand the taught process and how you solved the problem that you had with systemization at that point?

Ben: Well, I mean for us, the way on which we went about this was to identify the key processes within the business and it’s not a lot and there are a handful of them. And for us, we took the approach of putting what we were doing now down on workflow basically so that we could see which step took place and which department did interacted with and what was that next step. And then once it was all done from start to finish, where are the cracks? Where are the weak points? Where is the duplication of effort? Where can we consolidate tasks or people? I guess what are the things that are really impacting the customer negatively within this process and procedure? And then what can we do to automate it and make it more efficient. Once we did one process, we value it as good as we could and then revise it with excellence.

Owen: What tools are you using to at that point? You said you mentioned workflow. I’m just curious as to…

Ben: At that point I think we were using pen and paper, handwriting or we were using Visio to create kind of a swim lane type of work. That was fairly limited. So we also looked at SmartDraw which is a little bit more capable and a little bit more robust from standpoint. But you know, when it really came down, it didn’t make a difference. You could write it down on a piece of paper and to get that first step or you’re just looking at it. It was drawing paper and a pencil and just keeps erasing until you got it right. And then we put it down on a software package where other people could see it and understand that makes sense of it.

Owen: Okay. So let’s keep it more concrete then. Did you remember the very first task or activity at that point that you mentioned how you go through process of creating flow charts or whatever and breaking it down and then giving it to the team and filling out the missing pieces. That’s kind of like the framework you used and you continuously did that. But I was wondering if you can remember one specific task that you did at that point and work us through how you did it.

Ben: Yeah. I mean actually the first task we did was to tackle back reconciliation within our accounting department because that was the area where we were more than 6 months behind. Not just bank records but I need account reconciliation. And so it was really to take a look at the process of money in and money out and where it came from and where it went and what steps do the accounting department need to go through on a daily basis to ensure that nothing is left behind and that nothing was delayed because we were running more or less the word of log in to our bank account and see what we had in there and that was good for today but it really didn’t reflect what was going on out in the business and that was really hurting us from a gross standpoint and sanity standpoint.

Owen: During the pre-interview, said you brought in the Outsource CFO type of company. So I’m assuming at that point you realized that the thing with the finances, the business was one of the biggest bottlenecks that you needed to get systematized. So you went out and get an outside help. The ones that came in at that point helped you to systematize your business? I want to figure out how that worked.

Ben: Yeah. The first time I called my accountant to my normal accounting firm that worked for me for years, told them the situation, asked them for help and they kind of stepped and said, “Okay. We need to get somebody in there to really dig through the last 2 years of activity and get it in order and get it fixed so that you know whether you’re making money and losing money and then from that point you need to document those process and procedures that a department is going to go through on a daily basis to ensure that there’s not a day goes by and where accounts aren’t reconciled for today. So when they leave at another day, they know exactly what’s going on and when they come in the morning, it all matches up and they’re good to go for the day. And after that, it was all cleaned up. It was much more of a cleanup issue to begin with and then once I could figure out what was going on, that was when I could sit down really identify the steps that made to happen on a daily basis.

Owen: So besides the accounting and finances of the business, which other area after that? I’m sure after you systematized that, there was something else. What else was the bottleneck that you handled and how did you do it?

Ben: One of our next steps was to take a look at our purchasing process in which we want to know or was submitted from someone within the sales department. We do a lot of drop shipping or just-time ordering versus shipping straight out of our warehouse. So we needed to make that more efficient. So when an order came in to the system programmatically within our own software, a few platform we were able to push that purchase order off to the right distributor at the right price and got the right information back from them in return whether it was available or not, whether it was going to ship that day, what the tracking number was. Those are really some of the day in and day out, for tasks and it happen all of the time that automation just really makes it much more efficient for everybody in a much better customer experience.

Owen: You also mentioned that one of the other things that you did where you were trying to systematize the entire business was that you try to make sure there was a high level of communication within the company. How do you do that in closed departments?

Ben: Sure. We did a couple of ways that we can definitely change over the years and initially we had blown it all the way up to about 75 people at that point and that was very difficult to get everybody kind of in the same room and talking at the same time. So initially I can put together a weekly newsletter that explains what was going on, what we were working on, how it was going to impact different departments, the good and the bad. It was a very transparent publication that I will put out and everybody will get it on Monday morning and if necessary, we will cuddle as a group and walk through it step by step and make a conversation. That’s the ball over the years to a point where now we have a specific area within our building and we meet every Monday morning at 11:10, remember when we cuddle, we talk about what happened yesterday, what’s happening today but more importantly we really dive into the daily critical numbers for our business. And so we’re able to talk about those, about the impact and everybody could see some transparency across departments.

Owen: And so now, one of the things I try and guess too is always think of their business kind of like a conveyor belt where you know the starting point for a specific customer. Maybe it might be, they come to your site and make an inquiry and on the other end is them buying in your case now, one of the Voice of IP equipments, right? But there are bunch of departments and your systems that connects together to make that very starting point to meet that endpoint, so take us behind the scenes and what goes through the systems that you have, the departments as well and how they interact with each other to get us to the endpoint where the customer is happy and they received the goods that they want.

Ben: Sure. It’s a likely process. So our customer will typically come to our website and they’re going to order one or two ways. They’re going to order through the web themselves and then self-serve our customer. And in that case, it just comes into our ERP platform in a magical way.

Owen: And what is that? You keep saying ERP, just so that the audience, the listener knows what you mean.

Ben: It’s Enterprise Resourcing Planning side of it and that includes our accounting software, our inventory control, our purchasing side of the business and our shipping and receiving side of the business. The only thing that it really doesn’t cover would be customer data and that’s in the CRM platform tied to our website.

Owen: What’s the name of the software?

Ben: Currently we use Microsoft Great Plains as our ERP platform and the E-Commerce and the CRM side is really a system that we built ourselves. It’s based on Magento which is an open source E-Commerce platform.

Owen: Okay. So go ahead. I just want to share resources, just say the name so that the audience know what you’re talking about. But go ahead. So the person comes in places and order.

Ben: Yeah. So if they were through with then that they call into our call center and they talk to a sales associate to get their questions answered before they put their order in and then we’ll walk them through the app. So from then it goes into a holding state basically where accounting take a look at the order from a financial analysis standpoint and really deal at much more of a fraud control standpoint because every day we stumble up on fraudulent transactions in our business. So they have to take a look and they go through their steps to ensure that it’s about credit cards, it’s about companies, the shipping address is correct, that sort of thing.

Owen: Can you repeat that a little bit more because I’m sure people listening to that may have E-Commerce business and they might want to know the systems you have just to make sure that you handle fraud and prevent it kind of.

Ben: Yeah. That was a real big problem for us because we ship globally. And for a while we had to shut down international sales all together unless it was a wire transfer because we really had no way to ensure that a credit transaction was [16:23] to make any difference. There was really no way. A few years ago we found a company over in Europe that will pre-approve each international credit card and give us the thumbs up and back it from a financial standpoint. So if they approve the transaction, we’re covered and they’re the ones that will take the risk at that point. So we’re able to reopen international credit cards at that point.

Domestically I know it happens all the time. People will ship to, credit cards were stolen every day. People try and buy stuff, there’s some tell tale signs that you can usually pick up on a fraud when it comes in, customer call in late on Friday and they need it shipped overnight tomorrow morning. A customer calls in and they’re not interested in price, they want to buy 10 or something, they’ll take the warranty but I need it at 10:00 a.m. in the morning, no questions asked. A big one is when the shipping address doesn’t match the billing address. For us often times, that’s a recover requirement that those two have to match because our credit card validation software looks at the billing address. If it’s not right, it won’t approve of the card and that way we know that the billing and the shipping match that it’s going to the right place, to the right person.

And then the other piece that no one really knows or knows or where we got burned was that you actually cover something. You have to call the bank that issued the credit card if the shipping address is different than the billing address. You actually have to call the company that is on the back of the credit card and check with them and get them to confirm that the shipping address is a valid shipping address from that credit card. If you miss that one step, you’re a liable for the really matter.

Owen: So what I get from that is based on the fact that you own an E-Commerce businesses is going to be inherent situations where you’re going to… The myth I guess on E-Commerce business, you’re going to run decisions where people are trying to be fraudulent. And so what I get from that is these different scenarios that came with the fraud you basically piling them and keep a stack of them so that in the future if a scenario comes in that is similar, that just brings a red flag to the system. “Hey, we need to really dive and make sure this is not a fraudulent situation. Is that what I’m getting from that?

Ben: Yeah. That was like a year for us to identify the steps that needed to have. It’s more of a checklist and then I check this, and I check this, and I check this so that accounting isn’t on the hook for it. It’s their responsibility at first land but I just want to make sure that they’ve done their due diligence. And also, even with as thorough and standardized checklist that we have and it still needs every once in a while.

Owen: Well, that’s an opportunity is to add more kind of like an additional steps into the check they have on getting a potential fraud and in the future that same thing might not happen. So I saw the department that verifies that the transaction is not a fraudulent one, where do we go next?

Ben: The next step is going to go after the purchasing department and they’re going to take a look at the overall order, a lot of our orders with the mix of different products and brands and part numbers and that. So they’re going to love see whether we’re going to ship it out of our warehouse directly or whether we need to drop ship it from a distribution point and then whether or not, it can be consolidated or needs to be consolidated into a central order and then they act accordingly. And then they’re going to issue a PO to one of our distribution sources or there’s something that could be pick it off in the warehouse and it moves on to that scene. It then goes to distribution. They fireoout the purchase order and send some tools that we’ve built. Most of the departments have an extra amount or EPI at some sort that we can get immediate feedback from them as to whether the product is available or back-ordered. And additionally we can get the tracking number from along with them in the real-time manner which kind of closes the loop on the whole process.

Owen: So basically, it’s like, when the order is made and it has gone through that first step to make sure that this is a correct order and no fraud. It now goes into the point where you’re making sure, this is the shipping and handling department, right?

Ben: The purchasing department.

Owen: Okay.

Ben: And then if it’s going to ship out of our warehouse and was going into the warehouse operations and their job is to take pick ticket and pull the right amount the shelf and put it to the right box and ship it out where at right speed and update the records within Great Plains accordingly and that’s really the last step in getting up the door process.

Owen: And so, there’s some situations where if it’s not in your warehouse then you guys will go through the step of which is now to the suppliers to find out if they have it. You mentioned something about XML files and all that. Can you explain what’s happening there so that the listener knows the process.

Ben: Sure. Most of them certainly in the larger ones have an interface where our software will talk from there in an automated manner and so we can push, update it to them as far as which products, what quantities, what numbers, who we’re shipping it to, the speed that we’re shipping at and all of those sorts of things and that goes into their system automatically.

Owen: Go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Ben: And then the response to us is basically an either succeeded or failed and if possible “Here is your tracking number.”

Owen: And so when you got into that system now, I know it’s going out from you guys, from your warehouse or from your partners who are shipping it out, at the end you get the shipping information which you can also track whether the customer received the product. That’s kind of the entire steps in between them.

Ben: Yes.

Owen: And what I hear from that is a little of the things that you mentioned, there’s a lot of automation going back and forth, your system talking to or your partner system to make sure they had the systems document to some software to make sure that you have the inventory and all that. But I’m curious, has it always been like that ways? I’m assuming that it probably started from a very more manual situation between the departments. Is that the case or not?

Ben: Absolutely. I mean, the technology didn’t really exist some years ago. So the XML integration piece of it prior to that would have been we took the purchase order and save it as a PDF file and e-mail it to them and waiting to get the response from them.

Owen: Wow. And so I’m assuming now that used to be manual, you now created kind of like a checklist that is always repeatable and is always going to be the same. At that point you’re not taking the next day once like, “Okay. Let’s figure out how we can automate it because we knew it’s always… the steps for this very task is always going to be the same.”

Ben: That’s right.

Owen: And you ran into situations where there are certain things that you cannot actually automate?

Ben: Sure. There are exceptions within every process where something gets wrong in there and that it doesn’t make sense or maybe it’s a customer that has so much history in business with us that will make exceptions outside the rules so the process doesn’t make the same, doesn’t go through the same steps. There’s always a wrench that’s get thrown on there somewhere and we kind of have to leave some room for exception all the time. Maybe we should ship it to to somebody and they weren’t home and they got returned back to us. What’s the process at that point to address that? It gets there and the shipper dropped it and it’s broken. That’s not part of the normal shipping process that goes into an aceptance type of process.

Owen: I understand how you’ve gone through this journey as well as figuring out how it works manually to the point where now once you had a repeatable procedure, now you’ve moved to some situations where you automated certain things where people don’t even have to do it. Machine is talking to machine or computer stuck into computer and still gets done. What kind of challenges did you experience initial as you started this journey to create systems for your business?

Ben: Well, along with this is a couple of things. We were still in business, we were still going as fast as humanly possible and asking the staff to take that extra time throughout the day and after hours and on weekends too, not only completely tasks that were targeted but stuffs will document it, take screenshots, write notes, put together manual and actually in time that you need to do it and what exceptions are likely to come up and how those are handled within each processes. So there were some, we needed the buying from the staff.

Owen: How did you get the buying because I’m sure there were kind of some resistance to change because people would like to have the same thing the way they do things and now you come and say, “Change,” how did you get the buying?

Ben: A lot of it was to go through one process that everybody was kind of familiar with and get them at a high level and say, “There are areas where the common complaints that I would get from them were kind of an initial target.” So we’d get a complaint from purchasing that we don’t get information when a product is back or ordered from distribution. So to make them happy, I’m actually reminded to take a look at the process and find a way in which we can get that information from the distribution point so that they get the information they need and that purchaser is that much happier. A lot of the documentation of the buying was, this is going to make their lives easier. This is going to make their life more consistent, a lot less of potential stress throughout the day when things go off the tracks. And it was simply going to yes we’re going to have to take some time now but it’s going to free up a lot of time later, kind of a their problem.

Owen: Yeah. I get the end result but until they see the end result, there will still going to be resistance, right? It’s easy to see the end result, their life has made easier and stuff or acting more predictably. I can see the buying at that point. Also they see the end result, you definitely have that all resistance. I’m really trying to figure out if you remember anything, any tricks and things you did to really change up the whole process of them buying in before they even saw the results of it.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, for us, the culture of the organization has always been first and foremost within from the very point of recruitment to hire and to train, only the right people get in the organization and generally we’re looking for those types of people that are in lined with our core values and they’re adoptable to change and it’s a fun place to work, so for them to put in that extra effort was really more of a play day and then hang out. Yes it’s work but, “A) Hey, it’s going to make their life easy in the long run” and B) They’re working with their friends and not doing a job. They’re coming in and they’re enjoying their work. Yeah, it’s a little bit of extra work but we’re buying foods and drinks and we’re having fun. If it’s really a problem and maybe they’ve got family obligations outside that, we were very willing to work with them and say, “Look, we’ll get you some help.” We did bring in a couple of outside people to help shadow and document so that they were able to complete the task without having to do all of the minimal documentation of it.

Owen: You brought in some people whose task was to help them and documenting how they do their work. Okay. Let’s talk about that because that’s something I’ve not heard anybody say yes. Again, the first step where you say you made sure that when it comes to hiring people in the first, they hire an employer to make sure that the right people literally get on the bus which is your company, right? They had the right attitude and right culture to always seek out improvement. So when it’s time for you come to them and say, “Hey. Let’s work together and improve the system” because they are the right people on the bus. It’s a lot easier to get them to feel that way, right? So you don’t have first batch of screening. But now you mentioned something where you literally got in I guess consultants or actually employees whose role is to help improve the systems?

Ben: It was both. We did have a full-time person who originally had been sort of an administrative assistant, receptionist type whose job at least for the time being was to ensure that these all got done and coordinate them and help and address questions. We also did bring in a couple of interns that were college kids. The task wasn’t really that difficult. You can sit with this person and watch what they’re doing and ask questions and then take notes and put them all together, go through and take some screenshots where you’re at it and put them into a manual so that anybody could sit down and look at the pictures and look at their screen and follow instructions and complete the tasks. So we did bring in some help because there were few people that’s simply there’s no time in the day. Purchasing is a great example. From the moment she walks in at the morning until the moment she leaves, she doesn’t stop. It is not stopped out and there are lots of those. So in that situation we would assign someone to help them to go tough.

Owen: And did you remember at the time when you brought in this third party which might be a third party consultant or actually the employee or interns who is working internally to handle this specific task of documenting the procedures and updating them. Do you remember at that point any challenges that they brought to you at that point and how did you get this fixed?

Ben: From the interns themselves?

Owen: Yeah. The internal team’s role was to continuously…

Ben: No. I mean their task was pretty clear. It was to shadow and watch and take screen shots and put them all together. I mean it was standardized enough that they were able to do that. Their question would necessarily be to me as much as they would be to the person who they were shadowing to get an understanding of why they’re doing that. And that was part of their job was to kind of be a bit of a past and ask them why are they doing it because if the answer to it was, “I don’t know. We’ve always done it this way,” then we want to look at that piece of the process and find out if that really makes sense.

Owen: And so let me ask one more question on this because you said this was their job to come in to do that but say the listeners trying to probably hire people to come in to their company and do what these people were doing for you, what are the key characteristics of things you were looking for at that time when you’re hiring such people whose job is to help come in and literally improve the systems? If so, what are those things so that you can share with the listeners?

Ben: We needed people that were I guess comfortable with technology for one so they have some of the grasp of the software platforms that they would understand them completely and they just needed to be comfortable within them so that they understood where they were going initially. And more importantly, also a critical piece was this person had an extreme attention to detail, didn’t leave out any steps, they were very thorough and they’re questioning and answering a documentation. And so that the end result or at least the initial draft of a particular process, it really didn’t need to be revisited or rewritten for lack of detail.

Owen: So it’s kind of like a general of whose goal is to find out a story. This person is just coming in and he try to general of how you guys do the work in your business. It’s kind of like the story behind how the different tasks you have done.

Ben: I mean, their goal, their stated goal was shadow them and watch and take screen shots and take notes but at the end of it, they should be able to either themselves, sit down on different work space and complete the entire process flawlessly or hand that document to a 10-year-old and they could go through that document or handle it perfectly.

Owen: I like that because I see the point in that because if they’re not the ones doing the work but either clicking clearly and articulate how each of the task needs to get done, then literally you can bring someone from off-the-street and they can continue and take over even when the person leaves for one reason or the other. Meaning that the business can continue running regardless of who is there. I like that. And so, one of the thing we also want to talk now about is kind of like, what systems have you set up to enable that new employees knew exactly what they need to do. You mentioned how you had different departments but now we would want to talk about what systems you literally had in place to make sure that each person knew exactly what they have to do based on the department and what role that they had.

Ben: Sure. We finished this project a couple of years ago we went through and had a project, it was a yearlong project but we sat with every person and an outside person came in that really didn’t have any experience [34:19] but sat with this person and asked him what his job was and to detail the task that they go through on a daily basis.

Owen: Do you remember the company that you…

Ben: It was an individual. He’s now our full-time employee but it was a new employee that came in, a project manager came in and his first project was “project unknown” which was to find out what’s going on. So he came in and he sat with each employee and asked him what he did and asked them how they felt they were measured from a success perspective and how they felt how others perceive them and then their tasks. It was kind of an interview as well. What sort of things do they measure against themselves on a daily basis to feel successful or not successful at the end of the day and then we gather all the information up and we met with each person’s manager and kind of ask them the exact same questions of that individual. “How do you measure their success and not being up to par? What work do they have to do and what work is great, if they can also get that done, what would their job description be?”

And the outcome of that was a two-fold document. It was an interviewing and hiring document for anybody else that was going to come in on that role, “Here’s the exact job description and this is how you’re measured and this is what the perception is that you’re doing.” But it also has a score card on there for them to say black and white. If I go in and I talk to my manager today, I know right now before I walk in the door whether he thinks I’m doing a good job or a bad job. So that there are actually no time everywhere. Somebody needs to walk in to their manager’s office or my office or anybody’s office and not have a good understanding of whether they’re doing good or not and if they are really doing very well and if they’re not, where are they falling short or where do they need help from.

Owen: So what I get from that is when you hire this person who did “project unknown” as you termed it and sat down with everybody to interview them. To go with the interview was to really determine from their perspective what they thought success at their specific role in the department they work for, what they considered success. And by doing that, this person will be able to put out kind of like accountability matrix or scorecard of what success is for any specific role and then also went to the second stage of verifying that information they’ve got from the person on ground from the manager to make sure that, “Okay. Is this what I’m finding out in terms of what the accountability and the matrix are or the scorecard? Is this correct?” and when the manager says, “Hey, this is correct, this is valid.” Then now you know each role, you as the owner or the manager, you’re able to understand and now you can use this data to determine success of whether they’re doing the work correctly.

Ben: Right. That’s very helpful. What we found a lot of times is that the employee had a whole different view point than the manager have or that they’re originally hired for one job that had changed over the years and now they were doing completely different things and really didn’t have a good grasps of how they were being measured or what was expected of them specifically because each job has a certain number of things we absolutely have to do and then there’s departmental task that you’re involved in it, you need to be involved in but that’s not what you’re measured of, right?

Owen: I make it more concrete for the listener because we understand the framework you are using when it comes to trying to verify and track what each person does and each role. But can you choose a specific department or a specific role of an employee and give us what you say will be the scorecard for that role?

Ben: Sure. So let’s take it at our warehouse associate. They’re measured based on product based being received the same day that shows up. They’re measured based on hours the prints in the warehouse before a certain time after get shipped out that day. There’s a couple of times that they’re held accountable too. So if the sales department sends something back before a certain time, it’s guaranteed they’d get out that day and all the way up back to the sales guy from purchasing to accounting to sales to the customer. They’re guaranteed that they get the order by this time. It’s going to get out of the warehouse. So the warehouse is accountable for that. So if at the end of the day we see that 5% of the packages are printing, aren’t getting shipped out, at the same day we know that either they need more help or they need better time management or we need to adjust the cut-off time, some change to that process that needs to be addressed or maybe we need to address the person himself.

Owen: So what I’m getting from that is now, you as the owner, you are basically determining for all the different departments and all the different roles, what are the key numbers to track that if you get results back, it don’t match those metrics then you know something is wrong and you can jump back in and figure out what was the problem regarding the system and fix that very problem because the results you’re getting is not matching what the metrics should be. Is there an example that you can remember of how this happened and how you were able to use the fact that the scorecard did not match as you said it’s the number in the scorecard did not match. Can you remember an example of how or what will happen at that point, what you did after that?

Ben: It happens all the time that the metrics don’t necessarily match up and there are lots of reasons for that. In an example, like I’d say we go a certain number of days where the warehouse is operating at 95% instead of a 100%, we are going to go back and take a look at what it was. And what it turned out in that particular case was they were scheduling their time not as efficient as possible, they’re waiting until later in the day to receive product that will come out in the morning but the busy peak time for them is from 3:00 until 6:00 in the afternoon. So we adjusted some schedules and had somebody coming in two hours earlier so that by 3:00, all the receivable products had been received and put on the shelf and when it was busy time. We have 2 to 3 employees instead of 1 employee and we are able to get them back up to a 100%.

Owen: And when it comes to situations like that way, you remind me that you’re just basically reviewing the numbers and it doesn’t match. Is it you who is going back in or is it that you’re getting your managers to figure out how to solve the problem?

Ben: Yeah. It’s usually going to fall on managements that they’re accountable for their departments and ultimately I’m accountable for them getting their work done. So I’ll push it down to them and if they need help, I’m happy to do so but for the most part, the process is step back and evaluate what’s going on and just take a look objectively and find out what’s not working right. And that scenario it’s really easy, right? Let’s go back to it for a day and watch what’s going on and see what happened. Okay, you’ve got a 100%, maybe we didn’t get a lot of products received and the next day we’ve got a lot of products received and you only meet 90% and see you guys are scrambling and put stuff away in the middle of the afternoon and while you’re still trying to get the product at the door on time and let’s take a look at that as a potential bottleneck in address. Making sure that in 3:00 until 6:00, everybody in the warehouse is available to ship product and then not doing other things.

Owen: So continuous improvement based monitoring the numbers. I like that. And since now basically you built a business that is based on the systems and you’re not necessarily always involved, what is the longest time you’ve been away from your business?

Ben: About a month. With the people that I have in the business, I don’t feel like I couldn’t step away for as long as needed or wanting. I would have used it before if I did but… So I’ve got away for about a month and it was the combination of business travel and work travel and a couple of conferences, maybe some vacation that contemplate with business conferences and then maybe a customer visit. But the longest would be about a full month and that really wasn’t even that long ago. It’s probably earlier this year in June. I was in the office for maybe 2 days of the month.

Owen: That’s impressive. I mean, that shows testaments when you have a business that is systematize, you can actually do that. There are lots of businesses that cannot even go for one hour. And so now that you have so much free time to do whatever you want, where do you find yourself focusing the most of your time with that free time you have because you systematize your business. What do you spend that time on?

Ben: I split it between two things. I have three young boys and they got a whole lot more of my time than they used, so for the most part that’s kind of where I spend my time but relative to work. I have found myself now that the Voice of IP Supply that is about 12-years-old is not going in that start up days, it’s not a crazy hectic type thing which I really enjoy. What I’ve done has promoted internally a president position and I’ve moved my office upstairs in the warehouse basically to start up a new business that’s just me and I’m busy building that one right now.

Owen: I like that. So I think during the pre-interview, you mentioned you promoted a girl named Paula to become the president of the company and that freed you from day-to-day control and now you’re working on the new project.

Ben: Exactly.

Owen: What project is that if you don’t me asking?

Ben: Sure. I’m working on the company called CloudSpan right now and basically it is a sister company to Voice of IP Supply with the intent of providing the service required for customers that’s buying the hardware. And everybody is buying Voice of IP Hardware from VoIP Supply. For the most part, they need Voice of IP service whether they get it from the big known names like Ron [45:06] or they get it from somebody else. What I’m building in the business where we can kind of combine it to and be able to sell them funneled, pre-provision, ready to use systems instead of just selling hardware.

Owen: What I like about that idea is that you freed of your time from the initial business now but you’re going to a different business that is still kind of similar to what you’re already doing so you can really leverage the resources and even the customers or whatever, even the employees, even in this new business eventually, is that why you did that?

Ben: I did it for a few reasons. I did it, one, because it really closes the circle on our customer experience as being able to buy not just the hardware but the complete solution including dial tone and phone numbers, really adds value to our customer experience. It’s a very different business model, it’s a longer sales cycle of service recurring revenue business model where hardware is a more or less non-recurring on lower margin hardware business. They’re too exactly opposite businesses and one of them is a whole lot more comfortable than the other one.

In my experience is on the service side, require a company with the Telephone Service Bureau. Well, I think it’s a big win for the organization. It’s an opportunity for us to continue with the purpose within our holding company and which is to create leaders and bring them up. So even if I pull them from Voice of IP Supply in the CloudSpan or I bring in other people for CloudSpan specifically, it’s all very well aligned with the longer term vision and purpose of the organization. And from us, a financial standpoint is a recurring revenue business which really allows us to do other things within the either company. Once you have that recurring revenue basis where you can make different decisions when you have that recurring revenue versus not knowing how much [47:12] were you going to sell next month.

Owen: And so now that the listeners listening so far, what would you say is the very first step that listener who has like a E-Commerce business like you do have, what would you say is the very step that they should take in order to get started with this whole thing of systematizing their business?

Ben: The first step, I wouldn’t say at which would be a whole lot different than ours. If they did find the time to take a step back and look at what the business does from the systems and processes standpoint. I would most certainly talk to the employees and find out where their bravest points of frustration are. Talk to customers and find out where we potentially dropped the ball and let them down. Suppliers, same sort of thing, you look at each departments and each interaction with a customer or a vendor or another employee and generally kind of find the areas that need the most improvement.

Make that list and then look at those that kind of write them, “Which ones have the most impact on our customers? Which ones have the most impact on our future? Which ones are easiest to fix that have degrade its benefit?” And then putting it all together into a project that might take you a year to get it all done and get it right and get it perfect and realized that doesn’t happen half an hour tonight but every step that you take forward is really going to make that much more of a difference in improving every aspect of your business really.

Owen: So what books maybe, internet websites or even resources that maybe we did not talked about that have really had the most influence on you regarding creating systems and why?

Ben: Sure. Let’s see. The ones that has impacted our business from the consistency of communication and the importance of that process, of regular consistent communication and what you’re communicating about in our case it’s the daily critical numbers that applies to each department and how they roll up. For us, the only way for us to predict our future not knowing how much harder we’re going to sell tomorrow or how many web reserves are going to come in, is to monitor those numbers and find out which ones have the most needing indication as to how we’re going to do it tomorrow.

Owen: Okay. So basically it’s continuously coming out with like…

Ben: I came to a book that is entitled the Rockefeller Habits.

Owen: Okay. And that was where you got that idea of life, creating key performance indicators, is that why you mentioned that book?

Ben: The Rockefeller Habits?

Owen: Yeah.

Ben: It covers a wide variety of things. It covers the critical numbers on how to impact your business. Looking at your financials, when they’re done to the end of the month, for us, I get our financials on the 15th for the prior month. And if I look at them and say, “I know what happened.” Well, we aren’t anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks too late by the time I ask that question. So trying to have those critical numbers that are going to indicate some level of predictability as to our future was really big. And the book also then kind of takes that critical number and puts it into a daily huddle where you meet every day with your entire company and you talked about this number and you talked about if it’s good or if it’s bad or which part of it needs work and which part doesn’t. It gives you a real opportunity for the entire company to see what’s going on and that’s just in their department or in their world. But as the business overall and then within that, they can see which departments are doing exceptionally well and which ones are struggling, which one is has big impact because they all impact each other.

Owen: And that book is called The Rockefeller Habits, right?

Ben: Yup, The Rockefeller Habits. That was a big one. Another one was a book called Who.

Owen: By Who?

Ben: Brad Smart I believe is the author and that’s why we got a lot of the ideas for project unknown, for our scorecards and for a lot this. It talks about recruiting and hiring but the output of that were a high quality job descriptions and accountability metrics. So being able to present that to your distinct staff is great, being able to interview with a potential candidate and say, “This is what you’re going to be expected to do and let’s talk about how you’re going to get it done and whether you’re the right candidate for this job.” And then they come in the door in day 1 and know exactly what’s expected of them, they know exactly how they’re being held accountable and there are no surprises. Well, maybe they’re going to get it next month or maybe we’ll let it slide this month. It really allows them to hold themselves accountable and takes a lot of that pressure of the manager.

Owen: I really enjoyed the fact that you gave those two books because I always ask this questions for myself and the listener because I want them always take what they’ve learned and take it a step further by go and check out the books and for myself to continuously improve by learning as well. And so, what is the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing the interview?

Ben: Oh sure. I’m available on LinkedIn. It’s very easy to click me there. I have my own blog where I write some stuff, BenjaminSayers.com. My contact info is up there, people can use the contact form there. I’m pretty easy to reach. My e-mail would be sayers@voipsupply.com and I’m happy to help anybody. I like helping out to start-up businesses and entrepreneurs and I’ve got plenty of experience to share and that one to give a ton of advice. But I tell you what, work but didn’t work for me.

Owen: That’s good. And one more question. I mean now we’ve come to end of the interview, is there a question that you wished that I asked you during the interview that I didn’t get a chance to ask you. Now here is your opportunity to pull the question and answer to it.

Ben: I did. The one thing when I was thinking about the topic and the discussion and I think it’s a huge pit fall and process and procedure, developments is being all [53:52] in the documentation and automation of it from the standpoint of the customer where you can go too far with automation and process and procedure, definition where you alienate the customer in a way. And I guess a good example of that would be to tightly define and return policy for the products that you’re buying from us.

You can make it so tight that you don’t accept any returns and therefore you don’t have that liability and that certainly makes the process really simple if you don’t take returns but you’re going to upset a lot of customers if you don’t have some flexibility and that return policy for the defective car or if it’s something that just doesn’t work or they didn’t opened or maybe bought too many of them or what have you. We stumbled into that before where we’ve tightened our return policy up and then we realized that it’s just too tight. We need to loosen some of that process up and allow for greater exception to the rules because the returns are just too very [54:56].

Owen: And what I get from that is kind of like it’s great to systematize and even automate your business but you have to look at it from the customers, the experience that you want to deliver to the customer because people would think that they have a wow experience is just by chance. But if you know what the end result, the kind of experience you want to deliver to your customer then you use that as a stepping point to map out how the procedure or the systemization should be to get that end result. Is that what you’re saying about that?

Ben: Yeah, that’s right, just what things not to do to overdo it.

Owen: Thank you very much. And to the listeners, I’m speaking to you now. You’ve been listening to this interview so far and if you enjoyed this interview, one thing I want you to do is go on iTunes and leave a positive feedback, positive review so that other people can come and check out what we do here. To do that, go to SweetProcess.com/Love. And if you have know some other entrepreneur who runs maybe an E-Commerce business who might find this useful, feel free to share this interview with them. And also we have a newsletter. That way, as we have more interviews with entrepreneurs who have systematized their business just like Ben, you can actually be informed by e-mail every time we publish a new interview.

And finally, if you are at that point of your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck in your business, tired of being the only one that knows everything and everybody keeps coming to ask you for how stuff gets done? Well, use Sweet Process and document procedures for your business. Sign-up for a free 14day trial of Sweet Process or if you are currently systematizing your business but the tools you are using to do that is rather complex and your employees said, “I’m not using it.” Then try easier solutions. Sweet Process, sign up for a free 14-day trial of Sweet Process. Ben, thanks for doing the interview.

Ben: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Owen: And we’re done.