No matter how you look at it, scaling your business is difficult. Even with the best strategies by your side, there’s still a lot that can go wrong. Thankfully, a good scaling plan can alleviate many problems and make the process of scaling that easier. In this article we will cover some of the most important fundamentals of creating a good plan and scaling your business successfully no matter what industry you’re in.
Components of Business Scaling
One of the first steps in creating a scaling plan is identifying what could go wrong. Being familiar with your business, you should know about bottlenecks and problems you might encounter as you expand your operations.
For example, if your payroll system is inefficient, it is only going to get worse when you hire more people. If you double the size of your staff, how will your Human Resources department cope with the influx? So before you begin scaling, you can anticipate the problems you might face and create a plan to deal with problems before they arise.
It’s also important to streamline as many processes as possible. For instance, in a smaller business, a single person may be responsible for doing something like posting, recruiting, advertisements, or working with vendors. When your firm expands, however, multiple people may need to do that work and it will help tremendously if they have guidelines which stipulate how to get the job done quickly and efficiently.
- That can mean employees throughout the company recording their work processes and documenting the procedures they used to get things done. A good rule of thumb is that if a task is repeated, there should be guidelines dictating how to do it correctly.
Streamlining things make businesses more efficient since each employee knows exactly what they need to do. The larger the company, the more important it is that everyone knows their role. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that guides should be regularly checked to ensure that they’re up to date and reflect actual best practices.
The next step in scaling is to automate processes as much as possible. While automation has a negative connotation, as it often predicts layoffs, which isn't a bad thing. As your company grows, you’ll want to keep the same staff, however, you will also need them to fill in for newer roles.
If you don’t automate processes, you may end up with some of your most valuable team members spending most of their time with repetitive tasks instead of concentrating on helping scale the company. There are a whole host of software and hardware tools which can help your organization run more efficiently so that employees can focus on work which can’t be automated.
After systematize and documenting the work that each employee does, and automating everything that can be automated, it’s time to begin with the hiring process. As roles can change in a growing company, it’s important to hire versatile people who can take on new tasks as the company expands.
For example, ideally employees will always be looking for ways to make their own jobs redundant through automation or simply finding a way to cut out a process altogether. Under those circumstances, an employee shouldn’t be fired for improving the company. Instead, they’ll need to fill another role which may have little to do with what they were hired to do. That’s why versatility is so important.
Also, it’s important to maintain balance in the hiring process as you scale your company. For example, hiring too many people for sales will go against the production team - that is, if your business is selling products. Your production team will be unable to cope with the extra manpower, which clearly won't be used. .
That’s why it’s important to maintain a fair balance in staffing as you scale your company proportionally. Even if it means slowing down the scaling operation as you wait to fill roles, that’s better than acting too quickly.
Why Planning Every Step For Business Scaling is Essential
It’s essential to plan out each step of scaling so that you always know who is responsible for what. For example, in a smaller company, the founder or founders may have a more hands-on role in working with the product and directing the team. As the company scales, the role of the founder shifts more towards the administrative side where they are managing managers in charge of product development. It’s important to plan for this change in roles so that it doesn’t catch everyone by surprise.
In general, scaling is a hectic but important step for maximizing profits and a vital sign of great leadership for your company and the employees.
A good plan is crucial because certain processes can takes months, maybe even years to plan. If you don’t start planning now for contingencies,there won't be any good solutions when problems arise.
What Can Go Wrong if You Try To Scale Your Business Without Proper Planning
The first thing that can happen if you scale without proper planning is funding, or the lack thereof. New equipment and more personnel means a higher budget. If your company doesn’t have a long term plan in place to pay for this increased expenditure, it will run into problems as scaling begins. It’s important to have adequate funding lined up, which can either be outside funding or a plan to scale gradually by hitting sales targets to cover extra costs.
It’s also important to point out that if you begin scaling without a proper plan, the quality of your product may suffer. Manufacturing, quality control and distribution can be affected by unplanned scaling, making it necessary to plan ahead to ensure that you’re able to continue delivering an excellent product.
In the end, you must understand that if scaling means compromising product quality and customer services, it’s not worth it. But, with a proper plan,, scaling can not only help maximize profits, but also help existing customers and attract newer ones. . So the best bet is to plan ahead for any situation that might arise so you are primed and ready to deal with it in the most effective way possible.