"I think it is going to be much the same (from R.D. Abbott), just growing it in terms of scale," McCall said of the year ahead. "But, again, we don't know what we don't know. We have been through a two-year period here of uncertainty where we are doing things that we never would have dreamed of doing.
"Putting customer service in your home office? If you would have come to me three years ago and said we'd being doing that I'd have told you: 'You are crazy. There is no way we can ever do that.' But we have done it successfully, and it is working."
Still, there's something to be said about every small return to normalcy and the possibilities that something as simple as face-to-face meetings can bring, McCall said.
Because even with the challenges that rolled in with 2020—challenges that may have lingered or even begotten new challenges—R.D. Abbott's aim had been to hold steady.
And it did.
Starting this year, though, you'll start to see that change.
"We really want to see what this post-COVID world looks like with economics and supply," McCall said. "I'll be honest, these last couple years have been filled with nonvalue-added work, which is reconfirming orders, moving ship dates, apologizing for not having materials, escalation calls. I mean that is what we have spent the last two years working on, and it's really nonvalue-added. It's been sustain, not grow.
"And we are ready to grow," McCall said. "When you talk about an organization like ours … sustaining is not where we are happy. Growing is where we are happy.
"So we look forward to 2023. I think what can be a main driver is to get back to growing in terms of relationships, technical knowledge, sales to an extent. I think we are still a couple years out from growing sales substantially, but I think '23 is going to be a protect, block and tackle type year."