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The Approach
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The combination of presentation, discussions with other companies and application to their own company helped Golden North clarify its opportunities and challenges. Although China had already been identified as a primary growth market, the Golden North team realised that the people they had been dealing with did not have the right contacts and that they needed to find new people.
The team decided they needed to drive costs out of the business, so they looked for efficiencies, streamlined processes, and considered whether they had the people needed to take the company forward. Being based in regional South Australia meant that most employees came to the company straight from high school. Although the company had been providing “on the job” training, the team quickly realised that it needed people now with a different kind of knowledge and skills that would enable the company to grow. This meant they had to make some tough decisions about current staff members and recruit some new ones, but the team agreed it was critically important to get the right people in the right roles in order for Golden North to be able to grow.
The Growth Modules enabled the team to look at all aspects of the business, including its branding and positioning as a “SA-based company”, its packaging and its overall cost structure. The team decided that the lower cost of manufacturing in a small town was positive, but the transportation costs of trucking ice cream to the population centres on the east coast added costs to the product. So while the owners are committed to keeping the current manufacturing plant in Laura, they would expect future expansion would be closer to urban centres.
“Having four of us attend the program and address these issues together, and talking with other company CEOs, executives, and Growth Experts made us realise how important it is to talk with each other, and to communicate with our employees. We learned that it’s really important to keep people in the loop and get their input as we look at issues impacting the company’s top and bottom line.”