The Systems Great Businesses Use Part 2 (That Average Ones Don't) #20

A business is a pure strategy game. But a good system is a gold mine.

Back to the Engine Room

Last week we opened the hood and looked at the first three systems that set high-performing businesses apart.
And the replies I received confirmed something important: most companies think they run on systems…
…but very few run the systems that actually move the needle.

So today, we’re continuing the series.

If Part 1 showed you how great businesses build their foundation with the following systems: Knowledge Management, Decision Intelligence and Continuous Feedback.

Part 2 is about the systems that turn that foundation into scale, profitability, and predictability.

Here are the remaining 4 systems every great business relies on, and how you can start implementing them immediately.

4. Resource Utilization & Capacity Planning System

This is where profitability really lives.

What this actually looks like:

• Real-time visibility into team capacity and utilization rates

• Project profitability tracking (estimated vs. actual)

• Bottleneck identification and resolution workflows

• Scenario planning tools ("What if we hired 2 more developers?")

• Resource allocation optimization

Why this is different: Average businesses guess at capacity ("We're busy"). Great businesses know that X is at 92% utilization working on high-margin projects while Y is at 60% on low-margin work, and they can quantify the cost of that misalignment.

How to implement this tomorrow:

Week 1: Start tracking time by project profitability

1. Open a Google Sheet with columns: Team Member, Project Name, Hours Spent, Project Revenue, Project Cost

2. Have everyone log hours weekly (even rough estimates)

3. Calculate: Profit per hour = (Project Revenue - Project Cost) / Total Hours

4. Now you know which project types make money and which lose money

Week 2: Build a simple capacity tracker

1. List all team members

2. Calculate available hours per week (40 hours minus meetings, admin time = maybe 30 billable hours)

3. List current project commitments and hours needed

4. Subtract committed hours from available hours

5. This shows you exactly how much capacity you have to take on new work

Week 3: Create your utilization dashboard In Google Sheets:

• Column A: Team member names

• Column B: Available hours this week

• Column C: Booked hours this week

• Column D: Utilization %

• Add conditional formatting: Green if 70-85%, Yellow if 50-70%, Red if under 50% or over 85%

Tools to level up: Start with Toggl Track (free) or Clockify (free) for time tracking. Move to Float, Resource Guru, or Forecast for advanced capacity planning.

5. Automated Quality Control & Exception Management System

Great businesses don't just move fast, they move fast without breaking things.

What this actually looks like:

• Automated quality checks at critical process points

• Exception alerts that flag anomalies immediately

• Guardrails that prevent costly mistakes before they happen

• Automated reconciliation between systems

• Error pattern analysis to fix root causes

Why this is different: Average businesses catch mistakes after they happen. Great businesses prevent them or catch them in seconds.

How to implement this tomorrow:

Day 1: Create a pre-delivery checklist

1. List every step required before delivering work to a client

2. Turn it into a checklist template (use Google Docs, Notion, or even a printed sheet)

3. Make it mandatory: Nothing ships without a completed checklist

4. Track who completes it and when

Week 1: Set up financial guardrails

1. In your accounting software, set up budget alerts

2. Get notifications when any expense category exceeds 80% of monthly budget

3. Set up approval workflows for purchases over £500 (or your threshold)

Week 2: Build exception alerts:

• Use Zapier to send you a Slack alert when a invoice goes unpaid for 30+ days

• Set up email alerts when project hours exceed original estimate by 20%

• Get notified when a customer hasn't made a purchase in 60 days (for subscription/repeat businesses)

Week 3: Create a mistake log (back to knowledge bank)

1. Every time something goes wrong, document it:

   • What happened?

   • What caused it?

   • Cost/impact?

   • How we caught it?

   • How we'll prevent it next time?

2. Review monthly to spot patterns

3. Build systems to prevent repeat mistakes

Tools to level up: Zapier for alerts (free tier), PagerDuty for critical system monitoring, custom Slack bots, or purpose-built QA tools.

6. Strategic Relationship Management System

Average businesses manage customer relationships. Great businesses manage their entire relationship ecosystem.

What this actually looks like:

• Vendor and supplier relationship tracking with performance metrics

• Strategic partnership pipeline management

• Key relationship "health scores" across all stakeholders

• Referral network mapping and nurturing automation

• Board/investor/advisor relationship cadences

Why this is different: Your vendors, partners, and advisors can be as valuable as your customers. Great businesses systematize these relationships too.

How to implement this tomorrow:

Day 1: Map your top 20 relationships

1. Create a spreadsheet with: Name, Type (vendor/partner/referral/advisor), Last Contact Date, Next Contact Date, Relationship Strength (1-10), Notes

2. Include: Top clients, key vendors, referral partners, advisors, anyone who influences your business

3. Set calendar reminders for next contact dates

Week 1: Create relationship nurturing cadences Decide on contact frequency by relationship type:

• Tier 1 (most valuable): Monthly check-in

• Tier 2: Quarterly check-in

• Tier 3: Twice yearly

Week 2: Build a referral tracking system

1. Add a "Referral Source" field in your CRM

2. Every new customer: Ask and document who referred them

3. Monthly, review who's sending you business

4. Send personal thank-you notes to top referrers

5. Quarterly, take your top referrers to lunch/coffee

Week 3: Track vendor performance Create a simple scorecard for key vendors:

• Quality (1-10)

• Timeliness (1-10)

• Communication (1-10)

• Cost competitiveness (1-10) Review quarterly. Fire vendors scoring below 6 consistently.

Tools to level up: Use your existing CRM but create a separate pipeline for "Strategic Relationships" or use Affinity (relationship intelligence platform) for advanced relationship management.

7. Decision Intelligence System

This is the meta-system that great businesses use to make better decisions, faster.

What this actually looks like:

• Decision frameworks for recurring decision types

• Decision tracking with outcome analysis

• Automated reporting that surfaces decisions that need to be made

• Clear decision rights (who decides what, by when)

Why this is different: Average businesses make decisions based on gut feel or whoever argues loudest. Great businesses have frameworks.

How to implement this tomorrow:

Day 1: Create your decision rights matrix Make a simple document:

• Under £1,000: Department head decides, no approval needed

• £1,000-£5,000: Department head proposes, CFO approves

• Over £5,000: Requires founder approval

• New service offerings: Leadership team decision (requires 75% agreement)

• Client acceptance: Sales lead decides for deals under £10K; founder for larger

Post this publicly. Everyone knows who decides what.

Week 1: Build your first decision framework Pick your most common recurring decision (pricing, hiring, vendor selection, etc.)

Example - New Client Acceptance Criteria:

• Do they have budget? (Yes/No)

• Is this work we're great at? (1-10)

• Culture fit score (1-10)

• Payment terms acceptable? (Yes/No)

• Strategic value (opens new market/skill)? (Yes/No)

  Decision rule: Must score 7+ on fit, have budget, and acceptable terms. Strategic value can override one red flag.

Week 2: Do a pre-mortem before your next big decision

1. Gather your team

2. Say: "It's 6 months from now. This decision was a disaster. Why?"

3. List all the reasons it could fail

4. Now build safeguards for the top 3 risks

5. Document this before implementing

Week 3: Start your decision review practice

• Quarterly, review your major decisions from 3-6 months ago

• What did we predict would happen?

• What actually happened?

• What did we learn?

• How do we improve our decision-making process?

Tools to level up: Start with Google Docs for frameworks. Move to Coda or Notion for interactive decision trees. Use Miro for collaborative pre-mortems.

P.S. Is there a specific challenge or topic you’d like me to unpack in a future edition? Reply and I’ll add it to the list.

See you in the next edition,
Adina 🖤

Business Consultant & Fractional CRO
I make a difference in helping businesses scale smarter, with structure and strategy that work.

Visit my website www.ellcadofinance.com