SME advisory
Scaling without losing control
The challenge
The business had grown from a 6-person workshop to a 24-person operation in under four years, winning larger contracts than its systems were built for. The founder was still approving every purchase order and every hire personally, and two key managers had quit in the previous year citing unclear roles.
What Accent did
Over a phased, 4-month engagement, Accent's consultants ran a structural review of the business, mapped out who actually held which decisions day-to-day versus who was supposed to, and worked with the founder to design a leaner management layer, a production manager and an operations lead, with clear delegated authority. Weekly working sessions kept the founder involved without him being the bottleneck.
The result
Within six months, order turnaround improved and the founder reported getting Friday afternoons back for the first time in years. Staff turnover in the new management layer dropped to zero in the following twelve months, and the business went on to tender successfully for two contracts it had previously turned down as "too big to handle."