14 Tools For A $100 Million Business

Happy Sunday everyone!

I had a great week meeting new business owners and catching up with old friends at Hold Co in Cleveland this week!

We then held our leadership summit for CaneKast management in Minnesota this Friday. In the coming weeks, I might release some of the topics we discussed as we laid out our entire strategy map and playbook to get there with our team during the summit. Let me know if this would be of interest!

This week we are holding the SMB Social Mixer in Austin as well as our Manufacturing Mixer (Thursday and Friday). I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Reader Question:

Question: What cadence do you follow at CaneKast?

Answer:

If you have a question you’d like answered, you can reply to this email and I’ll record an answer!

14 Tools For A $100 Million Business

Slack

Purpose: Internal Communication

Enables:

• Internal Communication

• Plant Updates and Reports

• Metric Sharing

• Automated Reminders / Cadence Enforcement

• Searchable Record

• Asynchronous Work

• Global team cohesion

Slack is our Communication Hub. It is where all internal communication happens. This allows us to keep things separate from Customers and Vendors - and avoids an inbox that gets in the way of customer service and priorities.

Slack also gives our company a way to communicate asynchronously. This is incredibly important for our work and growth and is a tenant of our operations platform.

You can see that our interface is set up with teams, departments, plants, and then some cross-functional areas like Safety or Equipment. We encourage everyone to use public channels as much as possible. This maximizes knowledge osmosis and helps people stay up to speed on things they want - without bothering others.

We also have other tools set up to either launch from Slack Commands or ping Slack with key notifications.

We hold our meetings in Slack and are anticipating the SlackGPT function soon to automate meeting summaries and action points.

All plant check-ins occur through Slack as well, and we save them using Dailybot.

We are then using Spoke.ai in order to summarize the many convos that happen in the public channels during the day. Each day, I can browse the summaries, and then dive in where the topic looks pertinent to me.

Front

Purpose: External Communication / Email

Enables: Collaborative and Accountable Customer Service

What we like about it

• Internal Email Sharing and Commenting

• Automatic Rules, Routing, and Triggers/Actions

• SLA creation and monitoring

• Service Workload Monitoring

• Escalation Techniques

1. Custom Views

2. Shared Inboxes

3. Auto tags and Automation

4. Comments inline

5. Automated NPS Emails

Front is our main email client. Each email is also a ticket with can be assigned, closed, or saved. You can also comment on emails with people who weren’t on the original email. Anyone mentioned, assigned, or on the email can then monitor that thread going forward, even if not cc’d on future emails.

Front also helps us monitor our service to our customers. We have top customers auto-tagged with the “VIP” tag, and then SLA rules set up about how to answer all customers vs. top customers. Any email not meeting the criteria gets Eric and Myself added to the thread automatically so we can ensure our service levels

Front is great for team inboxes since you can “grab” an email by assigning it to yourself, as well as set auto-assignment rules. The ability for the team to discuss emails and issues right on the thread saves from messy internal forwards and accidentally emailing the customer while figuring out internal solutions.

You can even create custom views of emails and threads based on auto-tags. Our auto tags then kick off other automations as well which streamline our work. For example, we have a new quality card and 8D generated in our quality system once an email is tagged as a quality issue.

Finally, whenever a certain group of emails (customers) receives help, they get a chance to share feedback and rate us through an automated outbound sequence we have.

Loom

Purpose: Communicate [more complex or in-depth]

Enables: Async meetings and updates

Why we like it:

• Easy async tool for complex or deeper dives

• AI chapters and summary

• Full / Searchable Transcripts

• Builds a library of help videos

I try to answer deep questions or show complex workflows through loom. This builds an evergreen library and saves me from multiple screenshots and writing where the topic is involved.

Open Phone

Purpose: Phone System

Enables: Distributed and Scalable Phone System

Why we like it:

• Texting

• Shared director

• Tag numbers (ex. customer, vendor, employee)

• Answer other’s phone or delegate out

• Treats each call/text as an assignable ticket

• Automations

• Call routing

• Differing messaging based on hours or scenarios

Open phone is a cross between ticketing and calls and allows us to service calls from anywhere.

The system acts like a secondary number on my cell phone, a browser-based phone when I’m in the office, and allows me to grab lines, or delegate mine when I am busy.

This is a perfect system for a distributed team.

Stable

Purpose: Virtual Mailbox

Enables: Remote and Async Mail

Why we like it:

• Overseas team to parse, file, and take care of all mail

• A digital record of all mail, searchable and saveable

• Automations, Tagging

Given we use a global team to help with a lot of administrative tasks, Stable is our solution to physical mail.

Everything is scanned by the stable team. We then have our team shred, forward, deposit, or take care of whatever comes in. Not 100%, but works for us.

Confluence

Purpose: Documentations

Enables: The manual and playbook to run our business

Why we like it:

• Simple, without too many formatting

• Versatile with macros, add-ons, and content blocks

• Easy to organize, link, and structure out docs

• Templates

This is one of the most important aspects of our operation. Everything from how to price, to how to do inventory, to entering customers into our ERP, to your job as a plant manager… all documented, videoed, reference table’d... and available to the team.

Dropbox

Purpose: File Storage

Enables: Async and Shared access to all needed company information

Why we like it:

• Simple

• Constant sync

• Works offline when not connected

• A single place for all files

Asana

Purpose: Task and Project Management

Enables: Tracking and Monitoring of the execution side of the team

Why we like it:

• Simple

• Focused on tasks, not being “everything” app

• Grouped by teams

• Updates and On/Off Target indicators.

• Great for 1:1 tracking, or weekly project updates

Acumatica

Purpose: ERP

Enables: Enables a single place for business transaction recording

Why we like it:

• Highly customizable in-house

• Simple interface

• Open API so we can build whatever we want on it

• Import / Export on almost every screen

This is the epicenter of the transactional side of our business. The benefit list is too long to put here, but as someone who has implemented 4 ERPs in my life, and even built my own at one point, this is the best one out there right now. Not all businesses need an ERP… but if you do, I would suggest you put this in the running.

Here is an example of how we use Acumatica

Bill

Purpose: Vendor Invoices

Enables: Quick systematic approach to vendor invoice management

Why we like it:

• Auto parsing of invoice data

• Permissions can be set to create checks and balances

• Exports available for easy ERP uploads

• Aliased our AP address right to the software for automated bill entry

Paylocity

Purpose: Payroll & HR

Enables: One-stop for everything employee-related

Why we like it:

• Seamless payroll

• Onboarding data auto translates to payroll data - removed duplicate entry

• HR service for everything from a tough situation to sourcing market pay rate studies.

• Endless dashboards and reports on the employee base

• Employee surveys, engagement polls, and an employee community app

Freshales

Purpose: CRM

Enables: Automated help with building our pipeline

Why we like it:

• Automated sequences

• Ability to differentiate customers, prospects, etc.

• Auto inbox sync for sales contacts

• Contact scoring

• Automated workflows

• Pipeline view and reports

Airtable

Purpose: NoCode Builds

Enables: Quick tool builds in a simple interface to help us scratch the many unique itches we have.

Why we like it:

• Can build an “app” in less than 15 minutes.

• Decent dashboarding, forms, and automations built right in

• Can be modified on the fly from a phone

• Automatic customer reports are emailed out

  
  

Here is an example of what you can do pretty quickly in Airtable

Glide

Purpose: Mobile NoCode Tools

Enables: Quick and easy-to-use tools on mobile

Why we like it:

• With a blue-collar workforce that doesn’t use email, phones are a key part of the employee experience

• Can structure data grab and integrate right into their phone’s camera, notes, texts, etc.

• Simple to use

• Can put data anywhere to be used with the rest of the company’s data stores.

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