Whether your business has just secured first-round funding or the demand for your product or service has begun to outgrow your current capability, it’s crucial that you have a plan in place for growth and expansion. For many businesses, the growth phase is a time to assess your market position and competitive edge – analyzing trends that can inform the best strategy to either specialize or pivot within the industry.
Soft skills are always vital for business owners – having a network of partners, peers, and professional affiliations – but investing in systems and infrastructure that support process efficiency has become indispensable. Technology supports enterprise growth in various ways, from AI and big data analytics to employee engagement and customer retention strategy.
While hiring a management consultant or business growth coach may promise a more tailored blueprint for scaling a profitable business, the following recommendation areas represent high-return investments for business leaders aiming for the next level.
Consider Outsourcing Internal Processes
Outsourcing administrative processes to third-party partners or contractors can save time and physical resources for you and your team to focus on your core competency areas.
A growing business might benefit from outsourcing all its HR processes (from recruitment and onboarding to performance review and compliance) or outsourcing non-core operations such as bulk printing, video production, or social media promotion. It is no secret that marketing is essential when it comes to growing a business. Building a marketing strategy and utilizing the available resources is an important part of reaching out to potential customers and/or businesses that you want to work with or get on board. If you can find video production services, digital marketing services, etc., that are willing to work with your vision, you can cement your standing within your sector.
Outsourcing supports successful growth strategies when the outsourced process or service saves on costs without compromising quality or control. Firms specializing in HR outsourcing benefit growing companies as a cost-effective means to handle core HR tasks while providing valuable direction to long-term growth strategy.
Leverage Employee Insights
Conventional management theory has begun to recognize the importance of employee insight when addressing bottlenecks in product or service delivery – in particular, from employees closest to the customer in the product life cycle.
For small businesses, this is the default – for growing organizations with an increasingly diverse operational structure, ensuring standardized employee feedback can help management stay in touch with customer needs and demands.
Employee feedback helps a business identify ways to improve a product’s design or streamline the customer journey and boosts employee engagement and retention. Besides serving as the face of a growing company’s brand, an engaged and loyal employee base is a crucial asset for any business intending to scale responsively.
Streamline Customer Experience
Customer experience, or CX, is defined by how an organization interacts with customers at every stage of their purchasing journey – from initially learning about a product or service offering to completing an order and (ideally) repeating purchases.
A well-designed website and a knowledgeable customer service team are vital elements to the successful CX as a growing company in the modern era. With e-commerce transactions becoming the norm, growing businesses should invest in a seamless online purchasing experience to remain competitive.
The most successful companies will also implement digital incentives and rewards programs as part of their CX growth strategy. Loyalty programs deliver a significant return on investment for customer retention and organic growth through tapping customers’ personal and professional networks.
Transition to Digital Tools
Left as a file saved on a desktop, a spreadsheet does little to inform the best strategy for your growing business. Business owners can take advantage of big data processing to analyze and draw insights from large swathes of data without needing to house data on a company server.
The transition from traditional to digital information systems is revolutionizing historically static industries with advances in AI, cloud storage, automation, and advanced analytics. When a customer and internal business data is taken together and analyzed with the latest CRM or other process management software, a business can streamline operations while remaining more cost-effective than before.
Invest in a CCTV Security System
A CCTV security system does more than provide evidence after a break-in or a theft. The latest IP cameras and remote monitoring systems allow you to capture footage from inside and outside your storefront and take advantage of the latest technological advances to conduct temperature screenings, access AI-powered store traffic analytics, deter theft, and configure custom alerts sent to your smartphone or tablet.
With a subscription-free remote monitoring security camera system, you can view your security feeds in real time from any device, anywhere.
Next Steps
When growing your business, keeping up with growth is only the first step; planning for future growth and investing in systems and technology that can scale with you will help you avoid setbacks in the future. Invest in technology integrations that allow you to collect and analyze data quickly and easily to supercharge your business’ upward trajectory.