Findings from 60+ Scaling Businesses: Pain Points, Solutions and Market Trends

This report covers findings from discovery calls, implementation projects, and consultations with 50+ small-to-medium businesses across 15 industries throughout 2024-2025. These companies share common traits: revenue between $1M and $10M, teams ranging from 2 to 200+ employees, and growth goals that keep getting blocked by operational problems.

The central insight: 95% of operational issues trace back to one root cause - lack of documented processes and systems. Companies struggle to scale not because of market forces or competition; they struggle because operations live in founder heads, tools sit isolated from each other, and knowledge disappears when employees leave.

• Businesses lose 40-60% of productive capacity to switching between disconnected tools
• Founders spend 70%+ of their time putting out fires rather than doing strategic work
• New hire onboarding takes 2-3 months when proper documentation could cut it to 1-2 weeks
• Companies pay for 3-5 software subscriptions they barely use

• 60+ direct client engagements with full systemization projects
• 100+ companies using our digital products and templates
• 70+ discovery calls documented via Fathom AI meeting transcripts
• Post-implementation reviews and ongoing advisory relationships

Industries Represented:

What clients said:

The Pattern:

Companies run on 5-10+ disconnected tools:

• Project Management: ClickUp, Monday, Notion, or nothing at all
• CRM: HubSpot, Go High Level, Zoho, spreadsheets, or nothing
• Communication: Email, WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams - usually all at once
• Finance: QuickBooks, Xero, manual spreadsheets
• Industry tools: Procore, LMN, CoFab, Smart Glazer, Dear Inventory, Answer Connect

Impact:

• Data gets trapped in silos; no visibility across departments
• Same information entered 3-4 times in different systems
• No single source of truth for project or client status
• Employees spend hours searching for things in email threads
• One client reported getting 200 emails per day and losing an hour just searching for specific documents

This is the founder visibility problem. Data lives in 7 different places. Sales numbers are in the CRM. Project status is in the project management tool. Finances are in QuickBooks. Employee hours are in a time tracking app. Customer feedback is in email. And none of these systems talk to each other.

What clients said:

The Pattern:

Founders wake up every morning and have no idea how the business is actually doing. To get a full picture, they have to:

• Log into 4-5 different tools
• Ask team members for updates via Slack or email
• Wait for someone to compile a report
• Cross-reference spreadsheets that are probably outdated

What founders actually want:

One screen. One click. Every morning. Shows them:

• How much revenue came in yesterday
• Which projects are on track, which are behind
• Which clients need attention
• What the team accomplished
• What is stuck and needs their decision

The real cost:

Without this visibility, founders make decisions based on gut feeling instead of data. They find out about problems weeks after they started. They cannot spot trends until they become crises. And they stay stuck in the weeds because they do not trust what they cannot see.

What clients said:

The Pattern:

• Processes exist only in founder or manager heads
• Training happens ad-hoc and changes every time
• When key employees leave, knowledge leaves with them
• Quality varies wildly between team members doing the same tasks

The SOP Paradox:

Companies fall into three traps:

• No SOPs - Complete chaos, pure tribal knowledge
• Over-documented SOPs - 100+ page documents nobody reads
• Outdated SOPs - Written once, never updated, now useless

What works: Document only the critical 5-7 activities per role. Embed them directly into task systems. Create video guides for visual learners. Keep them short enough that people actually use them.

What clients said:

The Pattern:

• No KPIs or scorecards tracking what matters
• Managers cannot see what their team is actually doing
• Due dates get set but never enforced
• Overdue tasks pile up with no consequence
• Employees genuinely do not know what success looks like in their role

The Fix:

EOS-style scorecards with 5-7 metrics per role, tracked weekly. Not monthly. Not quarterly. Weekly. If someone is off-track, you find out in days, not months.

What clients said:

The Pattern:

• All decisions flow through the founder
• Employees wait for approval rather than taking action
• Business effectively stops when founder takes vacation
• Founder is the bottleneck for everything from client questions to equipment purchases

A telling stat: 0% of our 50 clients were exit-ready when they first engaged. By exit-ready we mean: could the business run profitably for 30+ days without the founder?

What clients said:

The Pattern:

• Companies use 10-20% of their software features
• Different departments pick their own tools with no integration plan
• No formal training; everyone figures it out themselves
• Multiple subscriptions for tools that do the same thing

Average waste: $500-2,000 per month on redundant or underused software subscriptions.

The 70-hour trap:

Most founders we spoke with work 60-70+ hours per week. But here is what makes it worse - those hours are not spent on high-value strategic work. They are spent answering questions their team should already know the answers to, fixing mistakes that happened because processes were not clear, and searching through emails for information that should be in a system.

The vacation test:

We ask every founder: "Can you take a two-week vacation without checking email?" So far, 0 out of 50+ founders said yes with confidence. Most laughed at the question.

The bottleneck effect:

When every decision runs through the founder, two things happen:

• The business can only grow as fast as the founder can think
• The founder burns out while the team sits idle waiting for answers

Before systemization:

• Working nights and weekends as default, not exception
• Constantly interrupted by "quick questions" that derail focus
• Mental load of remembering everything because nothing is documented
• Cannot delegate because only they know how things work
• Guilty when not working because things pile up immediately

After systemization (what founders report):

• 15+ hours saved per week on manual tasks and coordination
• Lead response time drops from 72 hours to 2 hours
• Vacations actually happen without business falling apart
• Team handles routine decisions independently
• Mental space to think strategically about growth

Even founders who have no intention to sell their business benefit from building like they might.

"No one is going to buy a company which cannot run on its own."

This is not just about exit value. It is about freedom. The same systems that make a business sellable also make it enjoyable to run.

What exit-ready actually means:

• Business operates at 80%+ effectiveness without founder present
• All critical processes are documented and followed
• Team knows their KPIs and hits them consistently
• Financial data is clean and accessible
• Client relationships are not dependent on founder personality

What clients value in ClickUp:

• Template launching for repeatable projects
• Permission controls and different views for different roles
• Time tracking built into tasks
• Email integration for client communication
• CRM capabilities within one platform

What clients value in Monday.com:

• Clean mobile experience for field workers
• Visual dashboards that executives can understand immediately
• Simpler learning curve than ClickUp

What clients value in Notion:

• Flexibility for custom knowledge bases
• Beautiful documentation that people actually read
• EOS templates and strategy documentation
• Client-facing portals and shared workspaces

Most requested automations:

• When lead comes in, create task and notify sales
• When payment is received, update project status and notify delivery
• When task is overdue, escalate to manager via Slack
• When client email arrives, log to project and extract action items
• Daily scorecard summaries sent to leadership team

Quote from client: "Currently we have the marketing team using GHL and Zoho, and then sales using Zoho, completions using Zoho, but then at the same time, we are having issues with analytics, because it is not updated." - Lenin Diaz, GetMyCourse

Common Challenges:

• Job costing across multiple phases and subcontractors
• Equipment tracking and maintenance scheduling
• Subcontractor coordination and change order management
• Progress billing tied to project milestones
• Field-to-office communication gaps

What clients said:

Solutions that worked:

• Equipment check-in and check-out scanning with QR codes
• Project-specific expense tracking that rolls up to job costing
• Automated notifications when subcontractor work is ready for inspection
• Photo documentation integrated into task completion

Common Challenges:

• Staff scheduling across multiple locations and shifts
• Compliance documentation and audit trails
• Patient and resident record management
• Training certification tracking
• Multi-location coordination

Notable example: Simplex Health

• 80 employees across home healthcare operations
• Full systemization including ClickUp, Make automation, SOPs, and EOS
• Result: 40% reduction in administrative overhead

What worked:

• Automated background check triggers on hiring
• Certification expiration tracking with advance warnings
• Shift handoff documentation in one click
• Compliance audit preparation dashboards

Common Challenges:

• Client onboarding inconsistency
• Content calendar management across clients
• Time tracking per client for profitability
• Contractor coordination for design and development
• Deliverable approval workflows

What clients said:

Solutions that worked:

• Client folder templates with standard deliverables
• Email templates that auto-populate client details
• Support ticket systems within project management
• Capacity planning to prevent over-commitment

Common Challenges:

• Supply chain visibility across multiple suppliers
• Inventory tracking between warehouses and fulfillment
• Amazon integration and FBA coordination
• Seasonal demand planning
• Order status communication

What clients said:

Key insight: E-commerce clients identified three distinct shipment types, each requiring different workflows:

• Direct-to-Amazon FBA shipments
• Locally assembled products
• Overseas manufacturing shipments

A deep-dive case study from Joshua Runion, GRELLC:

The challenge: Operations fall apart when owner is not present. Staff does not know priorities. No visibility into daily execution.

What they needed:

• Daily task checklists by role (greeter, wash line, manager)
• Lead assignment system for shift accountability
• Maintenance ticket tracking from detection to resolution
• Integration with AnswerConnect for customer callbacks
• Dashboard showing real-time operational status

Key quote: "I recognize, hey, there is a bunch of towels in the dryer. Why are they not already folded and put into the bin? The towels are low outside and the basket is full. How come that is not done? The back hallway is dirty. Why are we not sweeping it?"

Solution approach: Build Operations Execution System (OES) in Notion that creates task lists automatically based on time of day, staff on shift, and business conditions. Success metric: operations continue at 80%+ effectiveness without owner present.

A critical finding: 60% of our clients either use, have tried, or want to implement EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). But almost none have it working the way it should.

The problem with Ninety.io (EOS official software):

• VTO (Vision Traction Organizer) integrated with daily operations
• Quarterly Rocks that break down into weekly tasks
• Scorecards visible in the same place as project work
• L10 meeting templates with embedded data
• Progress visualization that updates automatically

The solution: Build EOS into the tool you already use - ClickUp, Notion, or Monday.com. No additional software subscription. Data flows from daily work to scorecard automatically.

Quote from client: "Our visionary and CEO downloaded the template before a plane flight. And at the end of the plane flight, he had filled most of it in. The whole vision traction organizer completed. It was just a really helpful tool for us. We are almost through our first month running on EOS." - Chad Owen, Care Atlas

Let us be blunt: most of what you hear about AI in business is hype. The reality on the ground is much messier.

Most businesses are not ready for AI.

Boston Consulting Group found that only 5% of companies are "future-built" for AI. Those companies grow 1.7x faster and achieve 3.6x higher returns than everyone else. But here is what the headlines miss - those companies did not get there by adopting AI first. They built operational foundations that made AI useful.

What we actually see in SMBs:

Individual employees are using ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools on their own. They are writing emails, summarizing documents, brainstorming ideas. But this is personal productivity, not business transformation.

At the company level? Almost nobody has a real AI strategy. They do not know:

• Where AI could actually help their specific workflows
• What data they would need to feed it
• How to measure if it is working
• Who is responsible for managing it

The chaos multiplier problem:

Here is what happens when companies try to bolt AI onto broken operations: they feed chaos in and get chaos back - just faster.

If your data is scattered across 10 tools, AI cannot help you. It has no single source of truth to work from. If your processes are undocumented, AI cannot automate them. It does not know what to automate. If your team is not using your current tools properly, adding AI tools will just add more chaos.

That quote captures the problem perfectly. AI without systems equals more fragmentation, not less.

Despite the hype, some AI applications are genuinely useful right now:

Meeting transcription is becoming standard:

• Fathom, Otter, Fireflies are now default tools in sales and consulting
• Teams use transcripts to create follow-up tasks automatically
• Knowledge from calls gets captured instead of lost
• This works because it is simple - record, transcribe, done

AI-assisted email drafting:

• 30% of our clients now use AI for first-draft emails
• Biggest wins: follow-up emails and proposal drafts
• Time savings: 30-45 minutes per day for high-email-volume roles
• Works because it augments human judgment, does not replace it

Internal knowledge bots (early stage):

• AI trained on company knowledge base
• Team asks questions instead of searching documents
• Reduces "where do I find X" interruptions
• Only works if the knowledge base is organized first

AI agents handling customer inquiries:

• Sounds great in demos
• Falls apart with any complexity or edge cases
• Customers get frustrated, brand takes a hit
• Maybe 5% of businesses can pull this off today

Predictive anything:

• Requires clean historical data
• Most SMBs do not have clean data
• Garbage in, garbage predictions out

Automated decision-making:

• Works for very narrow, well-defined decisions
• Fails spectacularly for anything nuanced
• The businesses that need it most are least ready for it

The Sequence That Actually Works

If you want AI to help your business, here is the honest path:

• Centralize your operations in one workspace - Get all your work happening in one place so data can flow
• Document your critical processes - AI cannot automate what is not defined
• Build accountability with scorecards - Know what good looks like before you automate
• Automate repetitive workflows - Start with simple if-this-then-that automation
• Then consider AI - Now you have the foundation for it to actually work

Skipping steps 1-4 and jumping to step 5 is why most AI initiatives fail.

What Clients Are Asking About (Future Demand)

Despite the readiness gap, here is what SMBs want:

• AI agents that handle customer inquiries 24/7
• Predictive scheduling based on historical patterns
• Automated lead scoring and qualification
• AI-generated reports and insights
• Voice AI for phone answering

These will become viable for more businesses over time. But the companies that will benefit first are the ones building the operational foundation now not as a prerequisite for AI, but because good operations are valuable on their own.

1. Platform Consolidation

The shift: From "best of breed" to "best of suite"

Companies are tired of managing 15 different tools. They want fewer platforms doing more things.

What clients say: "There is no possible way that I am going to leave the CRM system that I have right now. I am not going to add on CRMs on top of CRM systems if they are intended to do the same thing." - Frank Garcia, Roofing

The trend:

• ClickUp expanding into CRM, docs, and time tracking
• Monday.com adding work management features
• Notion positioning as all-in-one workspace
• Go High Level consolidating marketing tools

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2. Operations-as-a-Service

Emerging model: Fractional operations support

Not every company needs a full-time operations manager. But every growing company needs someone thinking about systems.

What this looks like:

• Monthly advisory retainers for ongoing optimization
• Quarterly EOS facilitation without full-time implementer
• On-demand automation builds as needs arise

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3. Exit-Readiness Focus

A surprising finding: Even companies with no intention to sell are building for exit.

Why?

• Systems that support exit also support scale
• Founder dependency is a personal liability, not just a business one
• Documented operations increase valuation multiples

After 60+ client engagements and 70+ discovery calls, one pattern is clear: operational problems are process problems, not people problems or technology problems.

The companies that scale successfully are not the ones with the best tools or the smartest teams. They are the ones that take the time to document how work should happen, build systems to track whether it is happening, and create accountability for when it does not.

The good news: these are solvable problems. The better news: solving them does not require massive budgets or multi-year initiatives. A focused engagement can transform how a business operates in weeks, not years.

The question is not whether you need to systemize. The question is whether you do it before you hit the wall or after.

This report was compiled by Camel Tech based on real client conversations and engagements over 2024-2025.

Camel Tech helps businesses systemize their chaos first, then integrate AI into operations - so founders can scale from $1M to $10M without working weekends.

They are Monday.com official partner and the team includes ClickUp Verified Consultants, Certified Notion Consultants, and software engineers with deep expertise in AI and automation. Camel Tech has worked with 60+ companies across 15 industries and built digital products used by 100+ businesses.

What makes them different: Most consultants either do strategy (and leave clients to implement) or do tool setup (without understanding the business). Camel Tech does both - auditing operations, installing systems, documenting processes, aligning teams on vision and KPIs, and then layering in AI and automation where it actually makes sense. The best part is their change management program where they make sure the system they build sticks and is used by the team.

The result: businesses that run on systems instead of founders. Teams that know what to do without being told. And AI that multiplies efficiency instead of multiplying chaos.

Track record:

• Crease Group: $3M to $10M revenue with the same 15-person team in 12 months
• SDA CPA: 85% of workflows systemized and automated
• KAUST: Enterprise ClickUp implementation with 80 projects and 50+ onboarding checklists
• Simplex Health: 40% reduction in administrative overhead