Scaling your business to grow

Scaling the team

You need the right people on your team with the skills and experience to scale your business.

• If you’re planning to develop a new product line, have the right people in the right roles.
• If you’re planning to divert some of your employees into an exporting project, make sure that you’ve still got the right people in place to continue with the domestic side of your operation.
• If you’re planning to enter a new market or expand your customer base, remember that you’ll use resources to do it. You must have access to what you need when you need them.
• Consider the current skills and experience your team has and think about additional training.
• Think about what areas of your business will need additional resources (staff, vehicles, and equipment to handle the increased demand).
• Review your suppliers. Will they be able to scale up with you? If you don’t think they can handle the increase in what you’ll need, look for new suppliers.
• Keep an eye on your pricing as your costs rise. Keep a close eye on fixed costs and take care not to lower prices even if by scaling you can take advantage of economies of scale.
• Location – look at moving to a new, larger location, or opening another branch of your business.
• More equipment – to increase production on a scalable level, you’ll need the equipment. It’s probably worth investing in newer machinery to increase output.
• Suppliers – if you’re going to need more raw materials to produce what you’re selling, make sure suppliers can meet the increased demand. If not, find one that can.

Scaling your capability

When you’re scaling up, your business needs the resources to do it.

When you’re scaling your business in terms of capacity, it’s important to factor in how to maintain your quality control, so that your customer experience remains constant as your business grows.

Try to look into the future as much as you can when you’re developing your capability and capacity in terms of scaling your business. Think about your company's growth over the next six months, one year, and two years.

Equipment and facilities

As your business grows have the right equipment on hand to do the job or the facilities to do it in. Take into account:

Tracking customers, building relationships

Your customer experience must also be able to scale. Doubling sales will double customer queries, complaints, calls, web traffic, and demands on your time.

Review your customer relationship system, possibly upgrading so you can track buying behaviors and preferences, maintain contact, and develop customer loyalty programs.

Remember, your customers are the most vital component of your business and to its growth, so engaging with them, listening to them, and rewarding them is essential, no matter how large your business grows.

Funding for scalable growth

When it comes to increasing capacity for scalable business growth, you’ll almost always need additional financing.

Even if your business is enjoying a healthy cash flow, financing options for expansion are worthwhile to explore if you don’t want to use up all your working capital on long-term assets.

A smart idea is to get advice from a financial expert – one who's had a lot of experience in business growth and expansion and will help you decide what funding options would suit your business best.

Don’t forget that ‘scalable’ means increasing all parts of your business to cope with the extra demand, and ideally, it’s ‘manageable’ growth.

Consider carefully

Like anything else in business, scaling it successfully is down to preparation and planning. Capacity and capability are the two most crucial factors when it comes to business growth, so it’s essential that you not only understand the difference but how to develop each one to make sure your growth plans can be achieved.

• Review your internal systems and processes to check that scaling up is manageable
• Identify what you need in terms of staff, facilities, equipment, and capital to achieve growth
• Talk to us about any funding you need as your business scales