You have decided to scale up your business. It means that you are doing well in your existing business and have overcome the challenges of day-to-day operations. The next step for you is to identify numerous ways to grow your business.
Even if a business sells products and services in bulk, there can be a challenge when they want to grow beyond a particular limit. You will need to have a new set of customers when planning to scale up your business.
Scaling means building your capability and capacity. What should your business consider while undertaking such an activity? Let’s find out.
Can Your Company Sustain It?
It is essential to identify whether your business is ready to scale up. Taking a call to grow and actually growing your company has a lot of differences. You can seek expert help to identify how to scale your business. Consulting market leaders and people with expert eyes will help you:
• Overcome the challenges that you face while scaling up
• Tackle issues related to your current infrastructure and workforce
• Keep your existing customers happy while planning to increase your manufacturing capacity
• Meet the deadlines of your existing business
• Maintain the quality standards of your existing business
The above factors can help you identify whether your company can sustain a scale-up process. It is essential to note that many companies have to endure setbacks while planning such strategies.
Therefore, it is ideal for you to ensure a proper plan for adapting the right systems, processes, technology, staff, and channel partners.
What Are the Critical Steps You Should Follow?
Evaluation Before Strategizing
One of the most crucial steps that you need to undertake while planning for scaling up is evaluating the process of growing. The method of evaluation will include the factors like:
• The budget which you can spare for the expansion
• The current technology incorporated into your existing setup
• The adoption of new technology and its compatibility with your existing infrastructure
• The availability of sales resources to support the system with requisite sales orders
• The forecasting of the increased expenses that you will incur after expansion
The above factors will help you identify the right strategy for your scale-up process.
Quantifying the Investments
Any scale-up process that you undertake will need a significant amount of investment. These investments will be towards:
• The incorporation of a new technology
• The expansion of your existing warehouse
• The upliftment of your current workforce’s technical skills
• The improvement of the quality of your product
• The streamlining of your logistics chain
• The change of management to incorporate resources with higher skills
Once you identify the appropriate investment requirements for your project, you can look for options to fund the growth. These funding options can include:
• Seeking investment from banks or other financial institutions
• Looking to rope in a new partner for investments
• Diluting a stake in the company to raise capital
• Seeking investment from potential investors
Ensuring Sales
A crucial task of scaling up means that you have:
• A requisite number of sales leads to support your growing manufacturing output
• Availability of the marketing systems in place to track the leads
• A robust system to generate regular sales orders
• A billing system that can take care of the increased sales numbers
Technological Investments
It is essential to quantify the technological up-gradation that your facility will have while scaling up your business. Technological advancement can help you with the benefit of economies of scale. You can invest in:
• The automation of your business to incur lower running costs for every product manufactured
• Various systems to integrate the entire process flow and have a seamless transfer of data (it will also ensure that the silos of communication do not hinder growth)
You can explore both software and hardware capabilities while looking for such advancements.
Scouting for Resources
The above steps can help you scale up your business by taking care of the non-human factors. However, it is essential to keep in mind the human aspect of your business. You can upgrade your resources either by hiring new resources or opting for a third-party service.
The above list is suggestive and helps manage the broad factors common for most businesses. However, to reap the maximum benefits of a scale-up process, it is essential to identify the critical factors for your business and industry.
You can add these factors to the list and then create the apt strategy for your company’s growth and scale-up process.
