3 Tips to Upscale Your Business the Right Way

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Growth Strategy (41-slide PowerPoint presentation). The reality is: all businesses face the challenge of achieving sustainable Growth. They need viable Growth Strategies. So, what is Growth Strategy? It is the organization's high-level Corporate Strategy Plan that outlines everything the organization needs to do to achieve its goals for [read more]

Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Strategy Development, take a look at Flevy's Strategy Development Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

* * * *

A business needs to grow in order to thrive, but 70 percent of all startups fail because of improper scaling, according to Startup Genome. The biggest contributing factor to this is business owners not knowing how to spend their money. Oftentimes, these business owners just buy what they can get their hands on in the hopes that it will increase their power to generate income. Purchasing random frivolities leads to ineffectual growth, and eventually, stagnation. As capital gets smaller and smaller, upscaling becomes more of a matter of surgical precision. It requires thorough needs assessment, attention to employee input, and meticulous planning that serves an overarching growth strategy.

Build a Plan Around Raising Your Bottom Line

The long and short of upscaling is that you’re doing it in order to increase your revenue. You do this either by opening up new income streams or directly improving existing ones. Whatever course of action you take, it all serves to increase your profit, and secondarily your company’s influence. Strategize everything from securing the means to increase sales to the logistics developments you need to make to maintain those means. This entails making projections on potential new clients and orders, and the expenses that will likely go up as you work to satisfy them. Then, account for potential measures you can take to drive those costs down.

The bulk of this plan would be taken up by how you would find the funds to make expansion possible, and how you would secure the sales to justify that expansion. Aside from traditional financing options like lines of credit or loans, you should also consider unorthodox means to gain funds. This includes things such as small business contests or potential discounts from equipment suppliers. As for sales, plan out how you can get more leads. Banking on your improved equipment and other upscaled aspects can be very effective for such a purpose. Improved marketing capabilities allow you to generate, track, and close leads. But aside from that, tech that makes things more convenient for potential clients, such as lightning-fast sales management and billing systems, will put your company in a much more favorable light.

Find Out Which Areas Can Use a Tech Upgrade

By and large, your efficiency will hinge on how good your technology is. Everything from your IT infrastructure to your logistics network contributes to how much larger your business can get. Improving the technology in the right areas can reduce labor costs, vastly increase production, and overall just enable you to do more with less. It’s all a matter of determining which technological sectors of your business need upgrading the most, and getting the best equipment you can afford for those sectors.

You should also emphasize on acquiring hardware that increases your operational effectiveness. Having a robust software infrastructure to manage your equipment and operations is well and good, but without actual hardware to work with, it is useless. Hence, hardware takes precedence. For example, if your operations primarily rely on moving things around, consider buying a fleet of skid-steer loaders to boost your logistical capabilities many times over. But don’t forget about systems integration. Even if you have the most rudimentary company systems, implementing proper systems integration ensures that they all work at maximum capacity.

Foster a Reliable, Quality Staff

No business runs without staff, no matter how automated it is. That’s why a critical part of upscaling is ensuring that your employees are up to the task of manning your newly expanded company. This primarily involves raising your hiring standards and investing in giving current employees better training. But aside from that, a pivotal factor that leads to quality staff is increasing employee morale and loyalty. Take Google as an example. They offer their employees an unlimited number of sick days, subsidize their student loans, and give new parents bonus payments and extended paid leave.

Now, a megacorporation like Google is certainly more capable of going the extra mile for its employees. But just because you are smaller doesn’t mean you can’t do the same for yours to the best of your ability. Making your employees feel almost like family is a surefire way to align them with your vision, and ingrain in their minds that your success is their success. Consider your employees’ work needs and ask them what they think they could use in order to work more efficiently. Then, incorporate this input in your upscaling plan.

In order to effectively grow your business, it is vital that you get to know it inside and out. Account for all the moving parts, and mark out all the components that need replacement or polishing. After that, put it all in a plan that guides every action towards growth and increased revenue.

Want to Achieve Excellence in Strategy Development?

Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Strategy Development. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.

"Strategy without Tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without Strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun Tzu

For effective Strategy Development and Strategic Planning, we must master both Strategy and Tactics. Our frameworks cover all phases of Strategy, from Strategy Design and Formulation to Strategy Deployment and Execution; as well as all levels of Strategy, from Corporate Strategy to Business Strategy to "Tactical" Strategy. Many of these methodologies are authored by global strategy consulting firms and have been successfully implemented at their Fortune 100 client organizations.

These frameworks include Porter's Five Forces, BCG Growth-Share Matrix, Greiner's Growth Model, Capabilities-driven Strategy (CDS), Business Model Innovation (BMI), Value Chain Analysis (VCA), Endgame Niche Strategies, Value Patterns, Integrated Strategy Model for Value Creation, Scenario Planning, to name a few.

Learn about our Strategy Development Best Practice Frameworks here.