Is your business struggling to meet its goals? It might be bottlenecked.
The term ‘bottleneck’ originated in manufacturing, referring to a jam on the production line. A business bottleneck forms when a process fails to flow smoothly from one step to the next because an issue causes it to falter along the way. It leads to a backlog of work, and slows production down until the issue is spotted and resolved.
Eradicating bottlenecks will save you time, energy and resources. So I’m going to explain how I identified bottlenecks in my business and devised a plan to remove them.
Spotting Bottlenecks In A Small Business
My aviation business, FlyGA, was struggling to get off the ground (no pun intended) due to company limitations — time, mainly. For the business to progress, we had to identify the main bottlenecks, and work towards unblocking them.
The FlyGA company vision is simple: to provide aviation students with the equipment and resources they need to become a pilot. Our focus so far has been on manufacturing the basic stationery required by all student pilots.
Starting out went relatively smoothly. The website, branding, product designs and ‘flight school finder‘ (a first in the UK) came together quickly, and the concept was very well received by the aviation community.
However, it didn’t take long for other areas of the project to stall. In particular, the physical products were not being produced at the speed, quality or quantity that we needed. And there were several entities, myself included, that were at fault for this.
But you won’t always notice the obvious weaknesses while you’re caught up in day-to-day tasks.
To get to the root of the problem, to expose the inefficiencies and determine exactly what was slowing this business down, I firstly considered all barriers between us and the company’s established goals. From there it was easy to spot the common themes.
Problems In The Business
You have to be highly critical to identify barriers preventing your business from meeting its goals. This means looking at yourself in the mirror as much as everything, and everyone, else involved.
Here’s a list of the barriers I identified:
- Supply: Order quantities were too low to meet an increasing demand.
- Inconsistent pricing: Prices were inconsistent between batches of products purchased from the supplier. This meant there was no way to accurately project future profits.
- Inconvenience / Wasted time:
- Inventory pickup: For some of our products, delivery was not an option. This meant putting aside valuable time to physically collect stock from a supplier’s workshop.
- Packaging: most products needed to be packaged separately from the supplier. Again, this wasted our time and created additional steps in producing the finished item.
- Lack of customer interest affecting some products:
- Low sales: Several physical products were generating little or no sales.
- Lack of digital product downloads: Nobody showed an interest in our Exam software, “AeroExam” — even when we offered it for free.
- Programming: Excessive programming time was required to create our digital product, AeroExam, which left little time to design new physical products.
- Under-performing blog posts: Blog posts were not gaining the readership we’d anticipated, and there was little free time to create new posts (to cast a wider net), or to focus on promoting those existing ones.
- Misplaced focus:
- Business partner: his strength lies in branding & designing new products, but he was increasingly focusing on (a) programming, and (b) marketing.
- Myself: my strength lies in writing, marketing (SEO in particular), and product research. But I was increasingly focusing on (a) programming, and (b) manual labour & handling inventory.
Summary of Bottlenecks
The barriers listed above can be summarised as bottlenecks.
- Unreliable supplier: cannot meet demand, cannot streamline our manufacturing process, wastes our time with no delivery option.
- Ourselves (how we spend time):
- Programming: takes up too much time and does not enable us to focus on what’s working best in the business: creating useful physical products.
- Research: we’ve seemingly misjudged the popularity of several products. We need to invest more time into designing ones that’ll generate more interest.
- Writing: articles are not helping us to sell more products. Furthermore, they take around 1-2 days each to write. The backlog of proposed content is piling up.
- Marketing: products and blog posts have been given little chance of meeting their potential. More promotion is needed. For example, PPC, SEO, Social Media, newsletters, outreach, etc.
So the bottlenecks in the business predominantly stemmed from an unreliable product supplier, and ourselves.
I devised a plan that would enable myself and my business partner to increase productivity while devoting the same amount of time to the project.
Plan of Action
In particular, I wanted to free up as much time as possible to enable myself and my business partner to play to our strengths.
Bare in mind that, at this point, our company didn’t have the funds to employ fulltime staff to fill the gaps. The only viable solution was to increase efficiency.
Here’s what I came up with:
- Change the supplier. Work with a more reliable factory.
- Put programming on hold. AeroExam is not crucial to the immediate growth of our business and we don’t have the skills or resources to complete it within a short timeframe. Focus on physical products for now, with a view to re-address it later on. This will free up a huge amount of time.
- Develop more physical products. Focus on producing products similar to the ones that are working well. Scale up using the new supplier(s).
- Stop marketing low-selling products.
- Focus on the products with a higher potential upside.
- Offer weaker products at a discount, or give them away in promotions to avoid Amazon FBA storage fees and recoup losses.
- Switch to evergreen content. Move away from writing blog content about current affairs (which needs constant attention). Instead, focus on writing about topics that’ll remain relevant forever. This reduces pressure and frees up time.
- Increase marketing efforts. Invest more time into marketing in order to give all existing products the maximum chance of success.
Has It Worked Out?
It’s a work in progress. Implementing the above plan has taken a lot of force. Plus new roadblocks continually appear along the journey.
But the business is undoubtedly in a far stronger position than it was before. Following through with this plan has helped us establish a platform to build an array of aviation products.
The important moral to all of this is that sometimes you’ve got to change course to improve productivity. And that might mean taking a temporary step backwards, abandoning certain ideas you had, or adjusting your vision to achieve it.
If you run a small online business and want to want to make some adjustments, my advice is to acknowledge your limitations, know your weaknesses, and play to your strengths.
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good.
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks! https://accounts.binance.com/it/register-person?ref=JHQQKNKN
Can you be more specific about the content of your enticle? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me. https://accounts.binance.com/en/register?ref=P9L9FQKY
The point of view of your article has taught me a lot, and I already know how to improve the paper on gate.oi, thank you. https://www.gate.io/pt/signup/XwNAU
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good. https://accounts.binance.com/pt-PT/register-person?ref=UM6SMJM3
Apoiar ferramentas de apostas e estar equipado com uma plataforma diversificada de transações financeiras, a 20Bet oferece suporte tangível aos jogadores. Este é um lugar onde eles podem apostar com dinheiro real, respaldados por concorrentes de diversas disciplinas esportivas. 20bet
Pingback: websites for essay writing
Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me? https://www.binance.com/pl/register?ref=T7KCZASX
Pingback: phentermine discount pharmacy
Pingback: inhouse pharmacy propecia
Pingback: online pharmacy cash on delivery
Pingback: cialis alternative over the counter
Pingback: best price for viagra 100mg
Pingback: viagra where to buy canada
Pingback: buy sildenafil tablets online
Pingback: best online pharmacy for cialis
Pingback: cialis for sale online in canada
Pingback: mail order pharmacy no prescription
Pingback: Tinidazole
Pingback: generic female viagra
Pingback: cialis tadalafil 10mg
Pingback: female cialis
Pingback: viagra miami
Pingback: generic viagra soft
Pingback: sildenafil 20 mg tablet cost
Pingback: order generic cialis online
Pingback: research chemicals tadalafil purchase peptides
Pingback: vikalis 20mg tadalafil
Pingback: sulfamethoxazole std
Pingback: valacyclovir weed
Pingback: pregabalin stopping abruptly
Pingback: lisinopril moodiness
Pingback: metformin finasteride
Pingback: furosemide thailand
Pingback: semaglutide pronunciation
Pingback: can fluoxetine cause weight gain
Pingback: what happens when you stop taking zoloft
Pingback: metronidazole sleepiness
Pingback: lexapro tinnitus
Pingback: duloxetine weight loss or gain
Pingback: viagra sildenafil citrate
Pingback: is escitalopram a controlled substance
Pingback: cephalexin for cats dosage chart
Pingback: what is bactrim ds 800-160 used for
Pingback: bactrim dosage for skin infection
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good. https://www.binance.com/ro/register?ref=RQUR4BEO
Pingback: amoxicillin and clavulanate potassium used for
Pingback: other names for neurontin
Pingback: augmentin pregnancy
Pingback: how long does it take effexor to work
Pingback: flexeril drug class
Pingback: diclofenac sodium 75mg tab
Pingback: diltiazem er side effects
Pingback: cozaar blood pressure medication
Pingback: flomax flow cytometry
Pingback: does aspirin expire
Pingback: allopurinol drug
Pingback: aripiprazole 10 mg side effects
Pingback: amitriptyline for insomnia
Your point of view caught my eye and was very interesting. Thanks. I have a question for you.
Pingback: what does augmentin treat
Pingback: what does augmentin treat
Pingback: will baclofen show up on a drug test
Pingback: can bupropion cause hair loss
Pingback: celexa dosage for anxiety
Pingback: celecoxib and sulfa allergy
Pingback: buspar vs klonopin
Pingback: 20 units of semaglutide is how many mg
Pingback: ezetimibe and muscle pain
Pingback: clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of repaglinide
Pingback: acarbose pancreatitis
Pingback: remeron sleep aid
Pingback: how long before protonix starts working
Pingback: who manufactures voltaren gel
Pingback: robaxin and xanax
Pingback: venlafaxine liver damage
Pingback: what is tizanidine hcl 2mg
Pingback: actos mediaticos
Pingback: stromectol pill price
Pingback: 60 teva spironolactone
Pingback: sitagliptin xelevia 50mg
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Your point of view caught my eye and was very interesting. Thanks. I have a question for you.
Pingback: cialis online pills
Pingback: sildenafil sublingual
Pingback: e d
Pingback: best online indian pharmacy
Pingback: sildenafil 100mg
Pingback: order levitra pills
Pingback: can you buy sildenafil otc
Pingback: viagra pills online south africa
Pingback: stromectol 12mg online
Pingback: stromectol order
Pingback: side effects of cialis tadalafil
Pingback: levitra vardenafil 20 mg
Pingback: cheap stromectol
Pingback: stromectol over the counter
Pingback: sildenafil tadalafil vardenafil
Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me?
Pingback: how much gabapentin should i take for anxiety
Pingback: pregabalin 75mg
Pingback: side effects from prednisone
Pingback: how long to take valacyclovir for shingles
Pingback: warfarin cotrimoxazole interaction
Pingback: is keflex a broad spectrum antibiotic
Pingback: ciprofloxacin chlamydia
Pingback: benazepril vs lisinopril
Pingback: modafinil qld
Pingback: metformin reviews
Can you be more specific about the content of your article? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me. https://accounts.binance.com/sl/register?ref=OMM3XK51
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks!
Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me?
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Can you be more specific about the content of your article? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me.
Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me?