To restructure at the right time is such an important factor to keep your organisation growing, and in some instances from failing…

In many industries things change over time. And 3 major drivers of this change are technology innovations, new routes to market and buying habits.

The key is being able to spot each of these trends early enough or by even creating one yourself. And then restructuring your organisation accordingly. But be warned, if you decide not to change or you don’t spot the change early enough it could be your down fall too.

And we can speak from experience, as we’ve been through several restructures ourselves…

We started our business way back in 2003 as a small retail shop in Rawtenstall selling printer consumables. Back then business was simple, we dropped 1,000’s of leaflets through letterboxes and people came & bought stuff.

Our model was pretty unique at the time. There was no internet shops and the only place you could buy a printer cartridge was on the back of computer shopper, and they could take up to a week to arrive. And within a few years we had 4 stores dotted around East Lancashire.

But to grow our business further we had to develop a model to service small organisations (small business, charities & schools) and not just the general public. Our 1st restructure was planned and created a model where we offered free same day delivery and 30 day trading accounts. Which meant investment in extra team members and vehicles. And a change in team structure allowed our store managers to become small organisation sales & delivery specialists.

Between 2008 and 2010 3 massive events happened, which if I’m honest caught us unprepared…

• Internet shopping started to appear, selling everything including printer cartridges
• The financial crisis hit everyone hard and made people question what they spent their cash on
• Then from 2010 (what I call super supermarkets (selling everything) appeared on your doorstep

These 3 events hit us hard and our business took a serious downturn. But we fought back to restructure again.

It was tough times for UK house holds, and there was not much spare cash floating about for non-essential items like printer cartridges. But small organisations still had to keep their wheels turning. So we joined 1 of the largest stationery buying groups in Europe & restructured into an office supplies business, which fueled growth again.

But trying to be an office supplies business in a network of 4 stores was very difficult. Both with team numbers, stock issues and trying to providing a consistently good service. We were bursting at the seams and in danger of imploding.

We had to change again. But not just change for the current. We had to look long term this time and be futuristic. Buying habits were changing too. People were purchasing all kinds of things on monthly plans and not needing to spend lots of up front cash. It was clear, this next restructure was going to be huge…

3 years ago we closed all 4 stores and moved into 1 business unit over an Easter bank holiday weekend (that was tough). Developed a number of money saving office technology solutions (print technology & telephone solutions etc) for small organisations & families. Which can be purchased on affordable monthly subscriptions.

Our aim was and is still to provide small organisations & families with certainty of their total costs (including the equipment) and certainty of guaranteed service & support. Which leads to their total peace of mind.

But I must be clear with you. The only way we could ever restructure our organisation without causing serious problems, is by planning. And I don’t mean a quick squiggle on the back of a fag packet. I mean a full blown project based transition plan. Complete with activities, start & end dates, ownership and costs.

The last one we did span across 4 months, had nearly 60 activities, included the whole team and cost about £10,000. But we know if we did not do it this way, it would probably cost us the business.

We know restructuring is now part of our DNA, and it’s going to happen many times in the future. In fact the next one will be happening soon. As we prepare to nationally scale our small organisation managed print service. And for this we’ll develop a project based transition plan too.

Restructuring for the 1st time can be really scary, and if your like us, you feel like you don’t really know what your doing. And if it helps, if any of you are planning your 1st restructure, or even your 2nd or 3rd and would like to get your hands on an example project based transition plan. I’m more than happy to share our last 1 with you. Just drop me a message on Linkedin or send me an email to darren@mytotalofficesolutions.com