Fix Pain Points to Eliminate Friction & Gain Traction in Your Manufacturing Business

Identifying and addressing friction points will help your business grow.

Building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint. In TANK New Media’s weekly podcast, Manufacturing Growth, Krista Ankenman and team tackle growth challenges. In this episode, Krista and Austin define friction, identify common business friction points, and discuss ways to eliminate them so your company can grow and scale.

Tackle one pain point at a time to remove inter-departmental and customer-facing friction points.

Friction is the resistance of motion between two moving objects. In the context of business, it’s anything that keeps progress, change, or growth from happening. Friction points impact companies internally and externally, but there are ways of identifying pain points that lead to friction.

The Definition of Friction

When asked about resistance within their organization, most people think of incomplete or poorly executed processes and functions both inside a department and company-wide. It also often includes either poor communication or a lack of it. The handing off of critical information has great potential to slow down, confuse, or misconstrue vital components. The bottom line is that friction points slow down business, waste time, zap energy, and result in lost revenue.

Friction Wears Out Systems

Picture yourself in a car driving down the road. Your right foot is on the gas pedal, and the other is on the brake. That friction is going to wear out your car, right? This same thing happens to people and systems within a business. Unfortunately, friction doesn’t just live inside an organization; it can spill over, affecting and impacting your customers.

Friction points are tricky because you may not always notice them — it’s those that fly under the radar that can wreak the most havoc, but they’re also the most common. They often have layers. It’s not one friction point; it’s layers of them. And you have to identify and uncover each individually in order to deal with the root issue or pain point.

Pain Points That Aren’t Acknowledged Become Deadly Tolerations

One business owner calls friction points “tolerations” — things that you tolerate over time. They’re the pain points that no one’s taken the time to address or remove so they’re just being tolerated.

When your business is growing, pain points will pop up that weren’t there before or didn’t exist before, and when you’re growing quickly and trying to keep up, it’s easy to tolerate these things. Maybe processes aren’t being defined well enough or they’re not working. Maybe things that were once done manually need to be automated now, but no one stopping long enough to figure that out and devise a solution.

Why Pain Points and Tolerations Aren’t Being Fixed

Business owners, employees, and sometimes even customers, don’t battle pain points because they’re scary. It’s a self-imposed fear of change. People hate the unknown, things that aren’t predictable or risk-free. If time and money are going to be invested in identifying the pain points and a solution put in place to remove the friction, it could fail. Nobody wants to fail, so they often play on the safe side of things and stick with what’s known, namely what they’re already doing.

But either way, time and money are being lost. Anytime there’s a pain point there’s going to be inefficiencies, and inefficiencies cost money. Fixing these pain points reduces the friction, and that allows you to find more time, energy, money. And doing so probably creates a better experience. Turn frustrated employees that feel stuck into excited investors who believe you care about improving their experience and the company’s environment.

It’s time to reclaim the money that’s just being squandered by inefficiencies. Get maximum output for your input. Take the time and energy needed to free up resources so that you can reinvest back into the business and then continue fixing other pain points and fixing the friction.

Where to Go from Here

Let’s say you’re willing to do what it takes to identify and address the pain points that are producing friction in your company. Now what? Where does one start the process? Here are a few things to consider.

• Brainstorm. Make a list of all of the pain points that you can. Think internal and external friction points. Consider your customers. If there’s something that is affecting the sales process or customer retention list those. Ask yourself: what jobs or tasks does nobody want to do? Give yourself a safe place and a dedicated time to brainstorm alone as well as with your team.
• Prioritize. Look at your list and determine which makes sense to fix first. Don’t tackle the biggest thing first. Start with something small but impactful. If it’s a relatively easy fix, consider working through one of the things that you’ve been tolerating for a while. For example, if a paint point is getting emails out the door and there’s a backlog, consider using automation technology. There are always things to automate. Take a look at some of your manual processes and determine which ones can easily be automated. This is not to say you shouldn’t tackle the harder, more difficult things on your list, but starting with the easier items that have high impact will get the momentum going.
• Set goals and analyze. Once you’ve identified your pain points, settle on your priorities, and created solutions, analyze the results and make adjustments as needed. Think in terms of cost, effort, and impact. Are your solutions creating a better experience? Are they help sales and customer retention? If you’re not checking off any boxes, you might need to make some tweaks. You heard the saying, “there are nine ways to skin a cat” — there are also nine ways to fix a problem. Come up with a list of ideas then reduce them to the best options. Work toward a solution with the best cost, effort, and impact ratio. Remember, you’re not building a castle. You’re just trying to make sure that you don’t face those same pain points again as you continue growing.

Future-Proofing & Systemizing for Growth

As you grow, things will change, departments will change, the way departments talk to each other changes, there might even be a new department comes along. Pain points will emerge, and friction will be felt.

BUT — you can uncover and fix pain points and the friction associated with them. Stop tolerating and start working toward solutions. One. Step. At. A. Time.

Are you looking to drive your business forward? Reading insightful articles like this one and listening to the Manufacturing Growth podcast are great places to start.

If you want to include inbound marketing and modern digital marketing strategies as part of your growth plan, TANK New Media would love to help.