What's involved with scaling a business?
Ready to take your business to the next stage? Congratulations! We know first-hand how daunting taking the step to scaling a business can be, but it’s vital for progressing. However, scaling doesn’t happen overnight, it takes careful planning and a lot of patience. This article is exploring some of the key things that are involved with scaling a business, to shed some light on the available options.
GAINING FUNDING
Money is essential for scaling a business. From hiring new staff to expanding on your facilities, every step of the scaling process requires financial support, so it’s important to gain funding where you can.
This can either be from the business itself, wherein funds gained from an increase in revenue are funnelled back into the business for use in its future. You can also go down the route of seeking external funding and taking on investors who believe in your mission and vision. Another option is applying to one of the many small business funds that exist for the very purpose of helping SMEs progress in a space that is dominated by the bigger corporations.
In order to make the most of any funding gathered for the purpose of scaling your business, make sure you have a plan for where each and every penny is going, and know exactly how the money is going to work to help you in your goal.
INVESTING IN THE BUSINESS
As you scale, your business is going to be under more pressure to perform than ever before, so it’s essential that you invest in the business as much as is possible. This means hiring the best people to support your mission and everyday operations, to cover any blind spots that the business may currently have, and to optimise every element of your day-to-day work.
As well, investing in some solid technology will ensure that you have the infrastructure in place so that everything can run smoothly. It can sometimes seem expensive to invest in tech as the cost is all upfront, but in the long-run it can save you some serious money. From automation tools to systems integrations, technology is an invaluable part of scaling a business.
INCREASING EFFICIENCY
It makes sense that a more efficient operation is a more profitable one. One of the simplest ways to increase efficiency in a business is to introduce standardised practices into the day-to-day operations. This could be anything from utilising checklists for projects to ensure that all non-negotiable tasks get completed for every piece of work, to a list of company values that staff are asked to live by while at work.
These standardised practices will also help to ensure that a business runs smoothly, even when its managerial team steps away for a period of time, which is one of the tell-tale signs of a successfully scaled business.
PUTTING A PLAN IN PLACE
Just as with setting up a business from scratch, having a solid plan in place is crucial for successfully scaling a company. If you don’t know what you want your new and improved business to be or do, it’s going to make the process of scaling that much harder.
It’s a good idea to do an in-depth evaluation of where your business currently stands, consider what you’d like to improve and develop, and come up with a strategy to achieve these goals. Reverse planning can be really useful here, as you are likely to start with an end goal in mind and then work backwards to determine the steps you need to take to make your aspirations a reality.
Try to think of everything when planning to scale – the more detailed your plan, the more likely it is to be a success.
Ultimately, there’s no one way to scale a business. There are countless different avenues you can go down, each with its own best strategy for implementation. If we were to pick just one point that’s been mentioned here as universally applicable, it would be putting a plan in place. So long as you know exactly what you want your scaled business to be, and how you want it to be of use to the public, you’ll have solid foundations for the newly expanded company.
If you’re looking for help with scaling your own business, we’d love to hear from you! Follow this link to start a conversation today.
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