ForConstructionPros.com

Each day you can pick up a newspaper or magazine or, more likely, read an e-mail that discusses how every type of business on the planet is taking steps to improve its operations, reduce costs, get more efficient, increase sales, reduce inventories, outsource manufacturing, close locations, etc. The speed at which business is changing is almost insane, and impossible to comprehend.

As contractors, you have to decide whether your company is playing in the improvement "sandbox", or has no idea where the sandbox is. Construction firms caught up in the stream of things:

• are holding weekly management meetings;
• are training their people;
• participate in seminars and conventions to gain knowledge about current events;
• know what metrics they need to hit to make money;
• have a strategic plan in place that gets updated annually;
• are not overpaying taxes;
• are not paying more than market interest rates;
• are in the upper echelon on the pre-tax profit scale.

In short, they are in great shape; they understand where they are at and where they plan to be. You know these firms. Hopefully, yours is one of them.

The remaining contractors just don't seem to get it. They may get together with their managers once a month or quarterly. Their accounting department is always three months behind and they can't figure out why. They don't know what they are spending on IT, or what they are missing by not having the latest system upgrade. They are short of cash because the receivables are not billed in a timely manner. Their internal financial information is lacking and they don't know if they are making money or not. I'm sure you also recognize these types of players. Hopefully, your company isn't one of them.

Guess what? It's time to take off your shoes, turn them over and see if you have any sand in them. If not, you better start looking for the sandbox, because all of the guys already there are soon going to kick your butt in the market. Believe it.