New COVID cases daily. Impossible staffing shortages. Supply challenges.
Sound like your restaurant? Frankly, it sounds a bit like GSS, too.
The restaurant industry is going through a lot right now, and these challenges worsen when restaurant vendors (suppliers, software, services, etc.) can’t perform.
I typically leverage these emails to share what I see across the industry and give restaurant-specific guidance on thriving in this environment.
[STOP] Not sure who you can trust your franchise accounting and finances to? See why you should choose GSS
In that vein, I want to talk about my business and how you can leverage vendor partnerships to give you a leg up.
What’s Happening to Your Vendors
Many outsourcing or professional services firms are in turmoil, with many throwing in the towel. Why?
Most professional services vendors weren’t built to handle this business climate.
The outsourcing outsourcer: Some providers are simply middlemen; they sign you on, then turn around and find a company offshore to do the work on the cheap. This isn’t just for overflow work; it’s their core servicing model. I am all for building a global company! But hiring people globally is different than outsourcing a core service. If COVID or new government policies cause a service disruption, they can be fatal, and you’re left in the dust.
People constraints: We all know that there are tons of open jobs and not enough people to fill them. Furthermore, many providers with these open positions are sitting in high-cost markets, forced to make replacement hires that aren’t a good fit. So, looking globally is an obvious place to go. Unfortunately, the lack of global experience makes starting a global operation very hard for these organizations – trying to do so overnight during COVID is a nonstarter. The result is that these providers are geographically limited, don’t have adequate training processes that are movable, or are unable to offer competitive benefits or attractive career paths.
Undisciplined growth: Worse yet are outsourcers that service your back office with their own software and people. These organizations tend to be disproportionately affected by these market challenges as their teams are spread too thin. They are in multiple businesses – software, accounting, and payroll. They have service-centric hierarchies with no depth. When one part of the business is crippled, the rest topples shortly after.
In short, many outsourced service providers are having to rebuild from the ground up. Don’t be a part of their experiment.
GSS Was Built Differently
We are dealing with many of these same challenges. We have COVID cases throughout the organization, staff turnover, and are experiencing difficulty managing the volatility of the current climate.
Luckily, we have built an infrastructure capable of weathering this storm.
When we launched in 2002 as an offshoot of Lockheed Martin, we were built for longevity.
- We aren’t geographically limited: We have team members in various locations, removing the geographic barrier that many organizations face. This makes recruiting more scalable.
- We have an in-house team: We don’t outsource our work. Instead, we have built a truly stellar in-house team with a long average tenure. That means we control performance and the customer experience. When challenges arise, we have full control of the business inputs to deal with them.
- We provide accounting and finance services, not software: Instead of trying to be a software and service company like some competitors, we partner with best-in-class accounting software (Restaurant365 and Jedox, for example) and focus on what we do best.
Is the time to outsource your service providers now?
I write this not to say we have everything figured out – we don’t! Instead, I write this as a perspective through which you can evaluate your current relationships.
Are your vendors truly partners, working arm-in-arm through your (and their) challenges? Or have you unknowingly anchored yourself to a sinking ship? Something to consider.
If you’d like to learn more about how your service provider should help your business – or discuss switching to GSS – get in touch with us today.