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Work locally, think
regionally
By Bill Cue
Smith Protective Services
Have you ever wondered about the challenges of managing a company with multiple locations, services and managers? Smith Protective Services has been around for 104 years, and I have been here 33 percent of that long history. So although I have always worked for a regional company, I have managed local branches in Dallas and in Fort Worth. Single operations offer just as many challenges as regional operations. However, they do differ in several ways.
The main benefit is the depth of management skills and creativity that having multiple managers offers. Our management meetings try to find solutions to common problems. For example, someone may be having success in recruiting methods that they can share and implement in other branches.
We have always felt it important to keep our management team stable. This keeps us a cohesive unit that continues to evolve and build upon our working together for years. By stabilizing our management, we are able to provide customers continuity and knowledge of their unique security histories, which is especially important given our industry�s turnover rate.
Another management philosophy that has served us well is that all staff positions consider our branches as their customers. Our accounting and information technology departments are not here to dictate to the branches but to support them and solve their problems. The branches provide the profit and we try to make that as easy a proposition as possible. Of course, there are certain accounting policies and I.T. protocols that must be followed, but if there is a way to assist management, it is our job to do so.
It is also a luxury for us to have the resources to provide our managers the financial support to make their commitments. If they need equipment, radios, insurance, etc., we are able to provide them, which helps us be competitive with national companies. This is also dependent on having a good banking relationship. We try to maintain an ongoing banking arrangement. This has been hard to do with all the changes in financial institutions, but we have been able to keep our business with one bank for several years now.
Including our staffing company, Smith Personnel Solutions, we operate 10 branches at this time. It is a challenge to keep all the branches performing at a peak all at one time. However, it also allows us to have one branch taking corrective measures to improve if we have the others making their goals. It is inevitable to have personnel problems, lose a valuable customer or have a collection problem. We just hope that this is limited to one or two branches at one time.
In my view, running a regional company is a lot like running multiple local companies all at once. And while a large regional company enjoys some benefits that size can afford, the challenges for any company are much the same, as are the goals � providing quality service to our customers and a rewarding career for our employees.
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