Dealing With The Real Risk Of Your Business Outgrowing You

business outgrowing you

There comes a time when a business owner has to make a choice. It’s a choice that might seem like an easy decision at first. The choice of whether to capitalize on the current success and grow the business or to keep it as it is. Not every business gets to that point, let us make that much clear. But those that do have a steep road ahead of them. Not only of failing but of finding that big business is too much to handle.

Scaling Your Operations

When talking about scaling, the first thing that’s liable to change is the number of employees in your team. However, it’s a mistake to go guns blazing, hiring new members into every existing sector of the business. Instead, you need to restructure the whole team. Some staff members’ roles won’t change. They won’t need any help. Whereas, with a bigger workload, some staff members won’t be able to handle tasks they once could. You need to look at the demands of a bigger business and redefine the roles from the ground up. Of course, that doesn’t just go for the staff. That goes for redefining your own roles, as well.

Finding Suitable Hands

The scale and the variety of the demands of a business will grow as the business does. You might have been able to enjoy hands-on involvement with every single aspect of the company before. However, the more you take on, the less likely it will be you can continue in that role. Instead, you need to focus on the responsibility of running the business, not doing business. This means finding people to take care of the roles you once did. Finding people who act as managers for the expanded team. You need to be able to identify and develop the leaders in your own team. Sure, you can hire from the outside. But using the expertise of those who have stuck with you from the start is preferable. It also builds a company culture of rewarding loyalty and hard work.

Creating A Real Brand

Speaking of culture, you’re going to have to think a lot more seriously about what yours is. In particular, you need to think about how you communicate it. Your business will need a unifying brand to stay recognizable as it grows. This will be important as your marketing methods are likely to grow alongside you. You have to develop a purpose behind a message. It can be what is unique about your business or what needs of the customer you intend on filling. Then you need to develop a voice for content marketing and a style for visual marketing to fill it. As we said, keep your brand unifying, but think of how it can be adaptable as well.

Eliminating Inefficiency

Your business doesn’t just need to look more professional. It needs to be more professional on the inside. As a starting business, it’s easy to overlook a little inefficiency. When you’re finding your feet, the pace is more relaxed. When you’re growing and dealing with new tasks and a whole new level of workload, it’s not as acceptable. You can’t keep relying on processes that slow down the workflow of the team. You need to take that team and overlook the methods they’re using for certain jobs. Identify where the problems lie and see if you can’t come up with alternatives. Business process management software like Processmaker helps a lot of businesses do that.

Getting On Top Of Your Money

Workflow isn’t the only thing that’s going to get a lot more complicated. The money coming into and going out of your business is going to grow significantly at the same time. You’re going to have new costs and hopefully new revenue streams to start accommodating. First, you need to get your record keeping in order. No more physically keeping files for different months. You need digital back-ups, separating them by purpose as well as date. Invoices need to be kept separate from payroll, for instance. Cash management is a hallmark of a successful business. You need to keep on the heels of incoming invoices and make sure you know every aspect of your cash flow.

Handling The Weight Of Data

Speaking of demands that are going to grow exponentially with business, data is going to give you some headaches. Scaling properly demands that you set up proper data sharing systems, whether it’s on the Cloud or with data centers. After all, you have a lot more and you need to keep it accessible and safe. At the same time, you need to start making use of it. Higher volumes of data mean it’s easier to spot problems as well as opportunities. For instance, customer trends that you can factor into your marketing and future offers. Consider how services like Allerin can help you in starting to understand how to properly analyze data. Otherwise, you’re missing a big chunk of intel that will really help your business succeed.

Knowing When To Accept Help

Indeed, you’re going to want to start finding all kinds of contacts to help you deal with the bigger workloads coming in. You want to be efficient, which means spending more man-hours on the tasks that are actually going to help you grow the business. Other tasks should be outsourced instead, left to experts who free you up for other purposes. For instance, if you’re in the business of delivering products but can’t yet handle the increased demand. Then you look at fulfillment services. If you need an all new website to deal with an expansion into e-commerce, you might want to hire a web designer instead of employing them.

Ensuring that your business doesn’t outgrow you is all about having the right plans for handling that growth. It’s about knowing who you need and where you need them. It’s about capitalizing on the exposure, resources and data coming your way. It’s about leaving behind the start-up shell and becoming a truly professional operation.

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