Operations Management: Working Smart for More Creative Freedom

Behind every polished interior design reveal is a maze of logistics to track—and when you’re the head of a firm, it can feel like every one of them is on your shoulders.This is where clear operations management makes all the difference. Far from creating corporate-culture-style constraints, tightly structured operations systems can unleash a designer’s creative freedom. We asked a handful of pros, including New York–based designers Kathleen Walsh and Gil Melott; Charlotte, North Carolina, designer Barrie Benson; and Pittsburgh designer Betsy Wentz, to share the strategies that keep their focus on the craft and their firms running like well-oiled machines.Define Roles for Every Team Member, From Designers to Project Managers to Procurement ManagersEven the smallest design firm needs support staff—someone to help pull fabrics, track procurement, chase invoices—so that the principal designer can direct the bigger picture. “My name is on the door, so the clients expect that I’m doing their design,” says AD PRO Directory designer Kathleen Walsh, who has a BFA in interior design and an MBA in management. “I’m best used for creative direction, for the important client conversations, and for the design phase.” For each project her firm (which has three to five members) takes on, Walsh brings in a junior or senior designer, along with a design assistant, to concept schemes, help build presentations, and present those options to clients. Her firm’s procurement manager is another key player. That individual works with the design assistant to send quote requests to vendors and, once the payments begin to flow, ensures that “all the steps in the process for every single purchase happen,” she explains. The procurement manager might be as in the weeds as making sure a fabric has been successfully sent from the knit backer to the workroom. In other words, they take on the kind of micromanaging a principal designer needs someone else to handle.Walsh’s operational structure is not dissimilar to that of larger firms like Barrie Benson Studio and Betsy Wentz Interior Design, which have 11 and 7 team members, respectively. Both of those firms’ namesake principal designers assign a team of one or two additional designers, a project manager, and a logistics manager to each project. The logistics manager is responsible for tracking everything that’s been ordered and owning such questions as Where is it? When does it arrive? And is it damaged? “A staffer dedicated to logistical management is something that a lot of firms are lacking,” says Wentz. “But for one single person to handle all of the project management, ordering, and designing—that, to me, is too much.”At Benson’s firm, team composition varies based on the project. “When we onboard a client, we create a team that feels right based on personality and strengths,” says Benson. Building your team with thought and intention is critical, agrees Wentz, whose firm has grown dramatically over the past five years and handles 25 to 30 projects at any given time. “At the end of the day, you do have to delegate and let people do what they know how to do. So many designer friends of mine tell me, ‘I know I need to hire someone, but I’m afraid.’ I was the same way. But once you do, you start to realize that bringing people on actually creates freedom and more revenue because you’re able to assign people the job. I think that’s how we’ve been able to escalate into so many projects at once,” she explains.Streamline Your Presentation ProcessA lot of recon goes into pulling together a client presentation: You’ve likely had the homeowner complete a questionnaire about their likes and dislikes, sorted through visual references they’ve sent you, and maybe even gone out for a discovery day of sample pulling and window shopping.Once you’ve crafted your scheme, it’s time to present the client with your plans. The key is finding an efficient way to do it. Walsh says that in the interest of valuing the time of her clients as well as her firm’s, “we prefer to do our presentations in as big chunks as possible.” The initial presentation, ideally, encompasses “the whole project, and a client is given two options for everything: two options on furnishings and lighting, two options on fabrics and finishes. They’re all coordinated.” The dream scenario, of course, is for a client to go down the line, select scheme A or B, and approve the whole project in 90 minutes. When indecision sets in, the team photographs the presentation, puts it into PDF form, and sends it home with the client to mull over, with a reply requested within seven days. “We seriously value our clients’ time, and we value our time and our profit margin,” explains Walsh.Benson also aims for a buttoned-up presentation but takes a more iterative approach. “We present a scheme that has the feel we want for that room, and it organically shifts during the presentation,” says Elizabeth Dooley Stamper, a senior designer at Benson’s studio, noting that they keep options and backup schemes close at hand. Once schemes are approved, the samples get stored in a clear plastic bin that can easily be whisked over to a site visit.Document Workflows to Prevent ErrorsThe path from presentation to procurement to install is long—and details can easily slip through the cracks when it’s not crystal clear who is exactly responsible for what. “I think of it as catching butterflies,” says Wentz. “There are so many details, but you don't want to feel like you’re grasping all the time and trying to get it all done. It should be clear to people which are theirs to catch.”At her firm, the physical corkboards on the walls of her studio serve as the living reflection of the project. Samples are pinned onto the boards, and as they are updated and approved, the project designer updates a PowerPoint presentation (the digital visual record) and the firm’s procurement software, Studio Designer. “The designers pay close attention to making sure that the PowerPoint is always up to date and review it with the project manager and Betsy before we send the client a proposal,” says Wentz’s office manager, Laura Buerger. That detailed review—called a specs check—is crucial because the project manager needs accurate pricing for each item to create the proposal. “If you were going back and forth between an 84-inch table and a 96-inch table, they have to price out the final choice,” she explains. The proposal also becomes a helpful visual check for the client. “You’re making sure the client sees that I’m ordering the round table, not the rectangular one,” notes Buerger.Walsh follows a similar tactic on the back end but with an all-hands-on-deck approach. “As the project moves forward, the procurement manager, the designer, and I are all responsible for putting notes into Studio Designer as the product moves along in the process,” she says. The team also puts all proposal packages through three checks before anything gets sent to a client. Echoing Buerger’s emphasis on the importance of accurate pricing, she notes that the RFQ (request for quote) is the most critical step. “Vendors are doing their very best to be responsive and turn around price quotes, and we really respect that. What we do not want to do is frustrate the hell out of our vendors by coming back and saying, ‘Oh, now we want to put a trim on the bottom. Or I forgot to tell you the fill on the sofa needs to be 70/30, not 50/50,’” she explains.New York City–based interior designer Gil Melott favors project management software Programa for tracking all those details and any changes. “I’m able to literally just copy the URL of a product I’m looking at online, drop it into Programa, and the software automatically populates all the specifications into the system,” he says. That’s a task that his team used to have to do manually, including photos, images, links, and lead times. “If it changes over time, it’s automatically refreshed. So what used to take days can now take seconds,” he says.Automate Your ReportingSoftware like Programa and Studio Designer offer robust reporting functionality—from project status and procurement to financial and P&L reports—that designers can use to monitor timelines and spot red flags. Betsy Wentz’s team, which uses Studio Designer, refers to these exception reports as “hot lists.” The project manager runs a report that confirms whether they’ve ordered everything that was approved, while Buerger runs a report that flags items with balances still to be reconciled. “It’s helped us do a better job of running the boring, day-to-day things that are important,” she says.For Benson, a Gantt chart—a visual project management tool that illustrates a project timeline—is key for tracking both project progression and cash flow. Estimated budgets, ordering phases, and projected timelines are plugged into a spreadsheet and updated quarterly. “When we started putting financial dates into it—for instance, when the big ordering was going to happen—it helped us realize when we needed to ask for deposits,” she says. Similarly, Wentz uses a trade schedule as part of their process to ensure that pre-installation work like measuring for wallpaper, carpets, and drapes sets off an alert 10 weeks ahead of install day.Schedule Regular (Mandatory!) Staff MeetingsFor all the efficiency of Slack, emails, and automated alerts, there’s no substitute for the nuance and alignment that come from a regular, dedicated, ideally in-person staff meeting—especially as your firm expands. That could mean weekly or biweekly all-hands meetings to check the status of projects, prepare for visitors who might be coming into the studio, and share updates about installations and staffing schedules. Smaller project-based team meetings are also imperative to make sure everyone has the latest information. At Wentz’s firm, the project manager schedules regular, recurring project meetings in the shared calendar every week or two.Keep Clients in the LoopWentz and Walsh recommend keeping clients looped in on the status of their projects—before they start asking questions. For Wentz, that means a biweekly report that gets emailed out every other week. For Walsh, it’s every Friday. Updates can be as simple as confirming that furnishings are being ordered or as detailed as an email dense with progress notes about fabric arriving at a workroom or a scratched table being repaired by the vendor. These updates also serve as a proactive coordination tool, allowing designers to lock in dates for upcoming milestones—such as wallpaper installations—well before they become urgent. “It reduced the number of phone calls and emails and probably solved 95% of the questions clients had on a weekly basis. I don’t receive questions anymore, and I haven’t for decades because of this item-by-item report,” notes Walsh.While implementing these operations management processes might feel like an administrative hurdle, they ultimately free you to do what you were hired for: the creative work. Relying on your team and your systems paves the way for that freedom. “Get a system, stick to it, and always try to improve,” says Wentz. “And hire nice, good people too.”