Scaling a business is crucial for its survival. It’s not just about getting bigger but doing it efficiently to avoid burning out.
Here’s a tough reality check: around 50% of small businesses in the US fail within the first 5 years. Unsurprisingly, 82% of all failed businesses attribute their downfall to cash flow issues. Business scaling is necessary to ensure your business capital can handle the rising demands. Inefficient business growth will cause capital burn-out in the long term.
Now, only 22% manage to scale independently and survive as separate entities. You can guess how difficult yet important it is to scale your business.
Don’t worry, though, you don’t have to come up with new scaling strategies to help your business scale. You can learn from businesses that have successfully scaled and see what helped them grow efficiently.
Below I am listing some well-known changes that have helped many small businesses scale. You can incorporate the ones that work best for your business nature.
What is Business Scaling
Before we get to the actual changes, it’s good to know what we are trying to achieve here. Helping a business scale doesn’t generally mean making it grow. Although many people use the words business growth and scaling interchangeably, there is a big difference in both.
Growth generally means an increase in overall business activity, such as expanding product/service offerings or entering new markets. Business scaling, on the other hand, involves changes that directly improve the efficiency of growth. It basically optimizes your current business activities to allow efficient overall growth.
The main goal of scaling is to make the business adaptable to changes and increase demand without an equal surge in costs. Here’s an example:
The problem: A grocery store is having trouble handling an increase in overall customer traffic, leading to long queues at the checkout counter.
The growth approach: The store introduces more cashiers and checkout lanes and invests in training programs for better service.
The scaling approach: The store implements self-service kiosks where customers can scan and pay for the goods themself.
Here in the growth approach, the problem is solved, but it takes too many resources. The scaling approach takes advantage of technology and automation to both take less space and utilize minimum labor for the same or better results. The advancement also paves a more efficient path for future rise in customer traffic.
Now that you know what scaling is, let’s learn some impactful changes that can help your business scale:
Integrating Cloud-Based Systems
This means moving some or most of your business activities to internet-based services instead of depending on local servers and physical infrastructure. However, for small businesses, having access to a centralized, globally accessible system is more important than less reliance on physical infrastructure.
There are many cloud-based software that can manage your business activities in the cloud and have many advantages that make your business tasks more efficient.
Benefits of Using Cloud-Based Systems
- Lower costs due to less demanding hardware and physical infrastructure. Cloud-based services are also more flexible, and you usually only pay for what you need.
- Highly accessible as central dashboards can be accessed from any device at any time using the internet.
- Enhanced security measures like encryption and access controls.
- The cloud service provider manages updates and security.
- Easier to scale up and down according to demand without being bound to physical infrastructure.
- Easier disaster recovery due to safer backups and less dependence on vulnerable physical infrastructure.
- Cross-integration with other cloud-based business systems for better optimization and analytics.
Common Business Activities You Can Move to Cloud
Below I am listing some common business activities that successful businesses have moved to the cloud to scale:
#1. File storage and sharing
Apps like Google Drive or Dropbox have solutions for businesses to store data in the cloud and easily access and share it.
#2. Accounting and finance
Cloud-based accounting software like QuickBooks or NetSuite can streamline your whole business’s finances, including managing payments and invoicing online.
#3. Project management
You can use apps like Asana or monday.com to allow your team to collaborate in the cloud and manage things remotely.
#4. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
A CRM system like HubSpot or Salesforce can help you fully manage your business and customer relations online to create scaling strategies.
#5. Employee Management Software (EMS)
Manage everything related to employees using EMS like Rippling or Deel HR. This includes a central online dashboard for onboarding, attendance, time tracking, payrolls, and more.
#6. Inventory Management Software
Offers a central online hub to track inventory stock levels, reorder products, handle tax, etc. Zoho Inventory and inFlow are a good example of such software.
Automate Business Activities
Many important business tasks can be automated to enhance efficiency. You’ll not only save time but also resources that could be focused on high-value tasks. I will mainly talk about software-related automation here since they are more universally applicable. Using the right software, you can automate common tasks to make business scaling easier.
Types of Business Automation Tools
Below you’ll find types of tools that can introduce automation in your daily business activities:
#1. Chatbots
You can add customized chatbots to your business website or helpdesk software to automatically answer common questions. They can even ask questions to visitors based on behavior and triggers. ManyChat and Landbot.io are some reliable chatbot creation software.
#2. Social Media Schedulers
Social media presence is a must, and automation makes everything easy. You can automate tasks like posting, content recycling, cross-posting, finding hashtags, etc., using SMM tools like Hootsuite, SocialPilot, or Later.
#3. Inventory Management Systems
These tools not only help manage inventory in the cloud but also automate many tasks related to inventory management. This includes generating purchase orders, ordering stock before it runs out, recording and maintaining supplier information, generating automatic reports for insight, and much more.
#4. Payroll Software
A smooth and efficient payroll ensures employees are correctly paid for the work done and without hassle. Tools like OnPay or Paychex can track employee working hours, automatically calculate tax and generate statutory reports, automatically release payments, manage employee details, etc.
#5. Business Password Managers
If you’ll be incorporating these online tools, you need to secure access to them. A business password manager app will give you a centralized dashboard to keep an eye on employee account security and help employees automatically log in. Passwork and Keeper are good options for this purpose.
#6. Network Automation Tools
These tools automatically manage network processes like network configuration, testing, deployment, etc., to control networks at scale and improve efficiency. A tool like SolarWinds or Ansible offers multiple automation solutions.
#7. Workflow Automation Tools
This includes apps that interconnect different business apps to automate tasks between them, such as Microsoft Power Automate and Zapier.
Use a Custom Dashboard Tool
Most of the online tools that help businesses scale come with extensive analytics tools that help keep track of progress and create strategies. However, separately tracking all the data gets overwhelming quickly and it’s also inefficient. I highly recommend using a custom dashboard tool when you need to track data from multiple sources.
These apps are made to interconnect analytics data of different business apps and show it in one place. For example, you can view and create strategies by tracking data from your CRM, ERP, and HR management tools in one place.
Not only do they show the data in one place, but they also help compare and create graphs using data from different sources, introduce new custom metric tracking, create custom alerts, and many other features that may not be supported by the original analytics apps.
Databox is my favorite app for this purpose. It supports over 100 analytics sources, including Google Analytics, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Ahrefs, SurveyMonkey, and almost every other popular business analytics app. You can also give Geckoboard a try if you want something simpler.
Digitize Business Activities
To be truly scaleable, you need to embrace the digital age. This means anything that is currently being done using paper, you need to digitize it. Digitizing your business activities opens more ways to run it efficiently.
Digital data can integrate into online apps, allows remote collaboration, provides global access, and more importantly; has a minimal negative impact on the environment.
Some of the automation and cloud integration tools I have mentioned above are already made to digitize common business tasks that have been traditionally done by paper. However, you need to look at your business functions to see what could be digitized for more efficiency. For example, digitizing receipts for better analytics and customer experience.
Furthermore, you should also digitize old documents to make them accessible online and part of your business analytics tools. And I can only hope you are still not using cheques for payrolls. If you still are, get payroll software right away and make sure it integrates with your accounting software.
Create Online Presence
If your business activity is mainly focused on serving customers at the physical store, you are missing out a lot. Online presence gives lots of tools and opportunities for a business to scale. There are many ways you can create an online presence, I am listing the most reliable ways below:
Ways to Create an Online Presence
You don’t have to apply all of these methods since managing them all together could be overwhelming. Choose the best ones according to your business needs:
#1. Create an online storefront
If you’re dealing with a limited range of products or services, then creating a basic website will do the job. However, for a broader array of products, you’ll need an e-commerce store. Platforms like Shopify or Wix can help easily build an e-commerce store without the need for coding knowledge.
#2. Having an active social media presence
Maintain active profiles on popular social media platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. As mentioned before, a social media manager app like SocialPilot will greatly help with this.
#3. Create a Google Business Profile
Go to the Google Business Profile page and claim your business on Google Maps to personally manage it. You need to have a good profile to make your business visible in both Google Search and Google Maps.
#4. Try online marketplaces
If you have a product-based business, then joining online marketplaces can help increase your reach by accessing existing customers. You can list your products on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, or eBay.
#5. Email marketing
This works for both in-store and online customers. You need to create an email list to market your products to existing customers. This keeps your product in front of the customers and helps generate leads. Mailchimp and SendGrid are good apps to get started.
#6. Create content around your products
A bit advanced but very powerful. You can create content like articles, guides, and videos around your products and services to attract new customers and retain them. These can be on your business website or third-party websites like YouTube.
#7. Invest in online ads
You can also invest in online business advertising through ad networks like Google Ads or Meta ads. It may require a good investment, but the results are worth it.
#8. Don’t forget SEO
Search Engine Optimization is crucial for bringing your business in front of the customers. Without proper SEO, even if you do use all these online channels, your business may still stay hidden. Here’s a reliable SEO guide for small businesses to get you started.
How Does Online Presence Help Business Scale?
Okay, so it’s clear that online presence helps businesses reach more customers, which eventually helps your business grow. But I am sure you must be wondering how exactly it helps your business scale. Below I am listing some of the more impactful ways online presence leads to business scaling:
- Gain access to more payment gateways to accept payment from customers, like PayPal, Stripe, Square, and GlobalPay.
- Reach a global audience without getting limited by constraints of physical location.
- Serve customers 24/7. Customers can browse, purchase, and engage with your business at any time without being bound to the physical store timings.
- Digital marketing is often more cost-effective, and campaigns can easily run on a large scale.
- Better analytics due to customer interactions being digital and recordable. This allows for more informed decisions and optimized strategies.
- Offers the opportunity to easily interact with customers directly and answer questions or solve problems.
- Allows for personalized customer experience according to their history and behavior, like personalized product recommendations.
- E-commerce and automation tools allow for easier scaling of operations without a proportional increase in resources.
- Having both in-store and online presence ensures quick adaption of the latest market trends.
- Customer feedback on different online platforms is more sustaining than word-of-mouth marketing. A single review can be seen by hundreds and thousands of potential customers, making single-customer reviews more impactful.
Wrapping Up 📈🔝
I should mention that applying all of these changes won’t magically lead to business scaling; think of them as a path, not a destination. Honestly, it would be too hard to apply all immediately anyway, so choose the best ones based on your business needs, resources, and personal experience.
Additionally, embracing these technologies comes with its own challenges, such as cybersecurity threats or dependence on third-party service providers. Make sure you brace yourself for them.