Does My Interior Design Firm Need A Business Audit?
The new year is already well underway, and we're having more and more conversations with clients about improving their interior design business operations. However, there are typically two follow up questions, 1) “How do I go about figuring out what I need to do?” and 2) “I’m small, do I really need an audit?”
A business audit is the most effective step in making changes to your interior design operations. A business audit is a comprehensive and impartial assessment of your interior design operations and the results you're getting. It is an effective means of assessing your effectiveness, processes, accomplishments, and progress toward achieving organizational objectives.
19th&CO has been offering business and operations audits to interior design firms of all size for a number of years. An audit is not only reserved for large scale companies. In a nutshell it's taking a snapshot of how your firm is operating right now, and providing recommendations on where you need to be and how to get there. This is doable with a two person operation as well as 50 person operation. Let’s take a look at what is included in the 19th&CO business audit for interior design and architecture firms.
The business audit offered by 19th&CO is conducted over five weekly strategy sessions, each lasting one hour, and delivered via Zoom.
Strategy Session 1: Your Profit
Strategy Session 2: Your Profit
Strategy Session 3: Your Projects
Strategy Session 4: Your People
Strategy Session 5: Your Choice
Your Profit
Many small interior design business owners think they are making profit when there’s a steady stream of work, team members are being paid, operational expenses are covered, and there’s still money in the bank. However, truly analyzing whether you are making profit involves drilling down by determining whether you are paying yourself enough, team utilization rates (are more expensive employees doing work below their skill set?), pipeline projects and looking ahead at whether you will steadily make the desired profit for the entire fiscal year and not on a month-to-month basis. Once we have reviewed your current financial climate we go a step further by coaching you on how to increase profitability with improved business development. It’s not all about hard selling, there are easy to implement tactics that when combined with some cold calling reap tremendous results. Will it happen overnight? Does anything successful and sustainable happen overnight?
Your Projects
Reviewing your projects is vital in establishing the way forward for your firm. It’s a true look back at what projects were successful and may have led to additional or return business, which type of projects you don’t ever want to encounter again and where is the work you would love doing and do well? We take a look at how your firm onboards new clients, the internal workflow of a project and manner in which the work is delivered. Is your team scrambling at the last minute to get to a presentation or do you have a comfortable, steady process allowing for the utmost in design work? Truly cracking open the work you are doing is important in understanding the type of firm you are, the services you are comfortable including with projects and the manner in which your team is functioning to deliver a successful project - all areas that need to be buttoned up for exceptional work, and long term clients who will also serve as your best sales people.
Your People
It goes without saying that a well adjusted team is essential for superior quality work regardless of the industry. The interior design and architecture industries do struggle in this area due to the nature of ultra creative individuals coming together to execute on a given direction. The importance of people management and nurturing your employees often gets sidelined due to the ongoing need to satisfy various client personalities and styles, and delivering quality work on schedule while simultaneously managing vendors, contractors and other outside contributors to each project. We will review team member skill sets and whether they are being utilized in the right ways, share tips on how the smallest of gestures go a far way with employees, and how to improve retention which is another industry specific hot topic. After performing a temperature check on your people, we will share recommendations for establishing a winning team culture.
Your Choice
Upon completing deep dives on profit, project and people the 19th&CO team will work with y ou on an area of your choice that you feel needs attention. This is where 19th&CO as your accountability partner come in and provide recommendations on a particular operational issue that may be unique to your firm or simply something you haven’t been able to solve due to bandwidth. Again, size doesn’t matter! It may be an ongoing issue or a new challenge that needs a suggested approach, we’re here to help.
Conclusion
Business audits help to identify and mitigate risks. This is crucial for small businesses, as they may be more vulnerable to disruptions caused by financial, operational, or compliance issues. Measuring the efficiency of your internal processes, controls and overall operations is what will take your firm to new heights, and help streamline your activities while improving overall project delivery.
19th&CO provides interior design business consulting for interior design and architecture firms of all sizes. As an extension of your team our cohesive group of seasoned operators can support you with interim positions in business development, recruiting, human resources and team culture, and business operations (including financial projects specific to the industry).
