The Blog of Brandon Milford - Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Design

In August 2004 there were 5 of us and there were a little over 500 clients. Over the past 16 months we’ve gone from 500 clients to over 3700 and the number of employees has grown from 5 to 22. It has been very exciting and interesting to see how things have changed as we’ve grown over this time. Lately, the greatest challenge has been communication. When there was 5 of us this wasn’t much of an issue. Our office was only 700 square feet, so it wasn’t a great challenge to keep tabs on everything going on within the company, from support to development. Everyone could hear all support calls and would subsequently be aware of any issues as soon as they arise.

In January 2005 we moved into a new office space that was over 6000 square feet. This space would allow us to expand over time, to our current number of employees and into the future. As mentioned above, this creates a challenge; communication. We have to ensure that everyone is on the same page and all employees are working from the same, up-to-date information. For instance, in marketing I want to know, from our support department, any issues that our customers are experiencing to see if we could solve these by improving the website, user interface and/or simple communication. This is something that we have all been working on and setting up policies, procedures, and software applications to ensure the proper information gets to the right person in a timely manner. As we move forward I think this will be a greater challenge as departments will continue to expand and hierarchies will continue to grow. The foundation that we put in place in now will certainly help as we continue into the future. I think the lesson here is that even when you’re small you have to start thinking about and planning for these things as the organization grows. If your company has around 5 employees and you would like to continue growing, go ahead and start thinking and planning for communication flows within your company. Go ahead and put the tools in place whether a project management software, CRM application, etc. As you grow having these procedures and tools in place will allow you to establish this foundation early and “plug” new employees into your system as you bring them on board.