In 2012 business life was re-starting after The Great Recession. The Federal Reserve was using quantitative easing to try and kick start the economy, which was still suffering. The unemployment rate was around 9%. It was against this backdrop that Aater Suleman co-founded an IT services company called Flux7.
Suleman and his partner started as “two smart guys with laptops” and would take any project. The partners quickly realized they needed to focus and become the best in the world at one thing.
They decided on becoming experts in helping companies migrate their technology to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This focus created a domino effect where the more they concentrated their marketing, the more they attracted customers interested in AWS. They were able to say no quickly to wrong fit customers, reserving their sales resources for people who wanted to leverage AWS. They also found the focus accelerated their referrals, which in turn fuelled their growth. By 2019, Flux7 had 70 employees and was acquired by NTT DATA, the Fortune 500 IT giant.
Suleman credits focusing on implementing AWS and coming up with a 5-step process as the main reason they were able to go from two guys with a laptop to a 70 employee business in just six years. Documented process allowed them to cultivate know how into an effective method and alleviate key employee dependencies to scale.
The Moral of the Story – Document Your Process: Once Suleman decided to focus on AWS, they wrote down their five-step process, which gave customers the confidence that they had a methodology. Having a process also gave Flux7 a point of differentiation (we call it “Uniqueness”), which Suleman credits with accelerating their growth dramatically.
How strong is the documentation around your business processes?
Contact Kirk W. McLaren, CEO, MBA, CPA, IFM, and Georgetown University lecturer at kirk@foresightcfo.com to learn how the eight drivers help you grow with clarity.