Scale, Don’t Fail: How To Enable Business Growth

They say that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow” and it’s important to remember this when you enter the world of business. Even huge, multinational corporations begun as simple light bulb moments in the minds of their founders.

That being said, business growth isn’t something that just happens to some companies and not to others. It has to be worked at and planned for. There are steps you can take to facilitate growth all throughout your business career, even during your company’s earliest moment. If you want your organisation to scale smoothly, here are some important considerations to keep in mind.

Start As You Mean To Go On

To ensure that your business is scalable you must think about growth from the very beginning. This means that if you can afford to buy for tomorrow, you should – don’t always take the cheapest option. Just take IT hardware as an example. You could save money today by buying the least expensive options available to you, but if it needs replacing in a couple of years so your company can move forward, then you’re finances are going to take a hit.

Similarly, consider growth as part of a clear business plan. Where do you foresee your business in three or five years’ time? Make projections in terms of profits, but remember to consider how growth will affect your entire operation. Will you need a bigger premises? Will you need more staff? Will you need a second, or third, business location? All of these questions highlight how growth can be a challenge, even if it is a welcome one. Planning ahead for these challenges at the early stage of your business will make things a lot easier for you.

Hire Well From The Beginning

When your business is beginning, you may not have much experience of the hiring process, you may try to do everything yourself, or you may be tempted to simply get anyone in as long as they are cheap. This approach to talent acquisition, however, is likely to cause problems for your company further down the line.

Your employees are the lifeblood of your business and can not only make growth a smooth process, they could actually enable it to happen in the first place. Scaling your business comes easier when you have a source of innovative new ideas regarding how your company can develop – and more often than not these ideas come from your employees. If you make sure to hire the most creative, talented people available to you, then they can grow with your business and ensure that you have access to all the skills that you need.

Choosing The Right Web Hosting Service

An online presence is a must for any modern business, but making sure that your website is able to grow alongside your organisation is not without its challenges. As you scale your business your technical demands will grow. Perhaps your website will receive more visitors, maybe it will need to process more orders, or maybe it needs a complete overhaul? In any of these situations, you’ll be thankful to have a web hosting provider that you can rely on.

If you want your organisation to be truly scalable then unlimited web hosting is usually the best approach to take. With unlimited web space and bandwidth, you can create an online presence that grows with your business, meaning you won’t have to worry about being locked into a hosting package that no longer suits your needs.

The Importance Of Marketing

Marketing is also a vital strand of business scalability, as no company can grow unless it acquires more customers. Due to the rise of new media, marketing has become both global and digital over the last decade, which brings both opportunities and challenges for growth.

Make sure your organisation explores all options available to you, including email campaigns, social media and content creation, and remember that marketing is never complete. It is a continuous, adaptable process that changes over time.

Joining The Cloud Computing Revolution

One relatively recent development in the IT world has made scalability a much simpler process for many businesses. Cloud computing, which is essentially the storage, sharing and accessing of computing resources over a digital network, has meant that businesses can access a variable amount of IT resources to suit their needs.

In the past, if a business experienced rapid growth, they may have needed to create an entire new data center to cope at great additional cost. What’s more, much of this additional hardware would remain underutilized for the most part. With cloud resources, however, organisations can scale up or down in real time, so whether your growth is long-term or due to a temporary sales boost, you can access more storage and bandwidth as and when you need it.

Make Use Of Your Data

During your company’s day-to-day activities, you will acquire a great deal of data, whether it’s about internal processes or your customers. This data will prove vital for many aspects of your organisation, but particularly if you want to scale your business up.

Data can tell you about which business processes are working well and which contain the kind of inefficiencies that are preventing your company from growing. Data can tell you which marketing channels are bringing in customers and which are not, allowing you to focus your efforts more effectively. Ultimately, data gives you the visibility required to see which direction your company is heading in.

Find The Right Investors

Scaling up is not easy and without some robust finances it can prove almost impossible. It is crucial that you make your organisation as attractive to outside investment as you can, which means coming up with a business plan that uses extensive market research to demonstrate the viability of your company. Show, as best you can, that your idea or startup really can be transformed into a multi-million dollar business. If you can do that, then you are much more likely to secure the investment that you need.

Network

If you want your business to grow, you shouldn’t cut yourself off from the wider industry. Although in the early stage of any organisation there will be plenty of tasks to keep you occupied, make sure you make room for some networking.

Attending industry seminars and events can give you a feel for how your competitors are operating, customers trends, and could inspire your next great idea. Achieving internal growth sometimes requires looking outside

Choose Your Partners Wisely

Partnerships are a fantastic way of facilitating growth and enable your business to leverage its resources in exchange for external help. They enable you to share ideas, experiences and business assets as part of a mutually beneficial collaboration.

Your business partnerships don’t necessarily have to come from the same industry, however. They could come out of left-field but help create a new opportunity. Apple and Nike, for example, have put their partnership to good effect to create a new wearable tech product that benefits both brands.

Automate For Efficiency

As your business grows, so will its outgoings, which means the pressure to find new efficiencies will increase. Automation is a great way of enabling growth without increasing your overheads, all while giving your employees more time to work creatively. Digital automation tools are now available for marketing, HR, finance and many other business processes.

Growth is a good thing for a business, but it isn’t a free ticket to the top of the pile. In order to make your business truly scalable, you’ll need a clear plan of action to ensure that growth doesn’t become a problem rather than an opportunity.