By John Davis, Alabama Graphics President
I recently said to a co-worker, “This business is so much easier to run when the economy is doing great!”
Of course, this seems to be a fairly obvious statement. But it is so true, on so many levels.
When the economy went south several years ago, we, like most businesses, were forced to really analyze every expense, every project, every prospect, every move we made. Our company’s biggest expense during “good times” was a huge amount of employee overtime pay. Being efficient wasn’t as top a priority as volume. And why not? We had plenty of volume, and business was booming from our AEC clients.
And then the bottom dropped out. And a lot of our AEC business dried up, as our AEC clients lost business as well.
We had to work really smart to continue making a profit out of every small, precious AEC job that came through the door. We had to diversify, and start talking to other industries as well about using our services. We had to cut back overtime to avoid layoffs. We had to really get creative. We had to work smarter, and leaner, and more strategically.
So that’s the big plus to a down economy – more efficient work.
These are habits our company won’t soon forget, even as the economy recovers and our core AEC customers come back to us with jobs and work.