My Trip to the Million-dollar Club

Proforma Resources and Support

To grow past a very small size, most businesses must specialize their labor. Each staff member cannot have the same job, because at a point, one person with specialized skills will be much more valuable than three or five people doing one-third or one-fifth of the same job. Example: A bakery with a single location would probably function fine with five staff members who all bake, work the front counter and handle deliveries. If that bakery wants to grow to have 20 locations, however, it makes much more sense to have a dedicated staff of bakers, salespeople, and delivery and fulfillment experts. With a much larger staff, the bakery chain can afford to specialize jobs without sacrificing staff flexibility and redundancy. The bakers can focus just on baking, without having to worry about picking up shifts at the counter or helping plot delivery routes, since there are enough staff in each specialty to share among locations, and the same would be true for the salespeople and fulfillment experts. This specialized bakery is a much stronger business than the smaller one, and essentially, it's this kind of specialization that Proforma and other distributor networks offer its owners.