Tips for Transitioning Traditional “Job Shops”

By Bob Chapa

Bob Chapa, CEO, Signarama Metro Detroit

Traditional “job shops” specialize in custom, “one-off” projects. If this describes you, know it can typically lead to certain hurdles to overcome in your company’s long-term growth plans.

As job shops grow, they tend to hit a ceiling in terms of how much work can be performed with the staff and resources they currently have. Processes will need to be adjusted to think more broadly. Because of this, many owners of these traditional job shops are transitioning into cutting-edge project management enterprises — and you can do the same.

The Next Level

Constantly pushing the boundaries of whatever-size organization you work in is a surefire way to continue to grow and become successful. At my Signarama shop in the Metropolitan Detroit area, we specialize in large-scale electrical fabrications (such as channel letters and sign cabinets), large- and wide-format graphics, and interior and exterior directional signage. We are also developing and implementing sign project rollouts across the nation.

Making the shift away from job-shop work has not only led to a noticeable shift inside our facility, but also proven effective with our clients and the public. We see a significant increase in confidence from clients who used to only think of our business as a single-project-at-a-time job shop. Today we routinely handle 50 to 500-plus projects simultaneously for clients all over North America.

We boast a wonderful mix of clients with various volume needs. We most certainly still assist those projects with one single item at a time, but we are now equipped with speed to stand out in the crowd. We also help clients with 500+ locations on rebrand projects spread out across North America. These range from simple storefront graphics, to large-scale electrical signage installs.

We take great pride in supporting our clients through anything they need — often positioning ourselves as industry leaders they will gladly recommend to colleagues. Even with all the advertising avenues available, word of mouth referrals continue to be the very best new business source for us.

The First Steps

One way we’ve accomplished this shift in business philosophy has been improving workflow processes. This is essential to our success. To provide the best service to our clients, over the years we have deployed dozens of various software applications to test and even tweak our workflows and processes.

Eventually our dependence on so many monthly subscription web-based software platforms helped me see that developing our own custom internal project management software for ordering and reporting would take us to the desired next level.

Another vital element involves workforce training and continued learning — even when we had as few as five total teammates. Today we have 50 teammates, and they have embraced our continued learning aspect, always open to learning more.

We developed an in-house training platform that covers a variety of topics including sign materials, specialized equipment, software, and customer service. As our work evolves, we’re constantly adding new topics to our training program. Often times, the ideas come from our experienced teammates who not only come up with the topic, but also build out the specific training.

Because of that focus on continuing education, we have developed an incredible team of project managers, who in turn monitor project progress and deadlines. The important thing is that they do not think of themselves as sales reps. Instead, these project managers know they are here to ensure that each job goes smoothly.

Keeping Up with Trends

Whether you are a job shop or a project management enterprise, it can often feel a bit exhausting to keep up with the latest trends, equipment, and products in the sign industry; however, I love and embrace the challenge of always staying ahead of the curve — and it’s critical to ensuring not just success today, but continued growth for years to come.

We attend multiple industry tradeshows (such as PRINTING United Expo) to learn about new equipment and products. We often refer those manufacturers or vendor partners to our colleagues. Doing this helps us develop fantastic personal relationships with key partners within the industry.

My role is to constantly focus on business growth and lead our incredible team in an energetic and forward-thinking way. By focusing on new and unique sign opportunities and solidifying our relationships — both with clients and vendors — we have proudly built a very strong reputation in our market as a go-to project management enterprise.

As we approach our 25th year in business next year, I can easily say that we are always evaluating our processes and making changes. For any individual (or company) looking to develop into the next step of project management, I recommend starting out by focusing on one client’s needs.

Often a deep dive into how to best solve the needs of a valuable client turns into wonderful new and creative ways to support them. It’s a great way to make your team better by constantly focusing on specific client needs.

This will help you start down the road of leaving behind the job shop moniker and becoming a successful cutting-edge project management enterprise.

Bob Chapa is CEO of Signarama Metro Detroit in Troy, Michigan. With over 85,000 square feet of showroom and manufacturing space at their headquarters, they are one of the largest sign companies in the Midwest. Chapa is also Founder/CEO of National Branding, a branding specialist that serves as Brand Ambassadors for the largest and most respected companies in every major industry on a national level.