Six Essential Steps to Scale Business Operations

Scaling up a business means “to grow or expand in a proportional and usually profitable way”. Scaling is different from growth. When a company grows, its expenses increase even as it earns more revenue. When a business scales its operations, its revenue increases but operating costs remain low. Businesses that have successfully scaled add customers quickly without adding additional resources, thereby driving consistent growth and increasing profit margins over time. Business transcription service providers play a key role in helping their client companies scale their operations by providing cost-effective information processing and documentation solutions.

Steps to Scaling a Business

Here are the important steps to scaling a business:

• Create a strategy: The first step, according to expert business mentor Score, is to evaluate your business and see if it has the capability and capacity to handle growth. You would need to determine which parts of your business are scalable and can be replicated quickly and cost-effectively. Your business systems, team and infrastructure needs to be equipped to handle scaling. Things like insufficient staff and manufacturing capacity, miscommunication, and not enough delivery capability can pose barriers to effective scaling. The costs of scaling up must be estimated to create a realistic plan.

• Ensure availability of funds: Scaling operations may mean hiring new staff, investing in new technology and equipment, and creating systems to support and monitor expansion. Make sure you have additional funds for this. Running out of funds will affect scaling.
• Scale your company culture: Culture drives employee engagement, enhances productivity and builds a stronger business. A business that wants to scale needs to create a culture where people want to be and excel in what they are doing. “Culture is the sum of how your employees behave, the right talent and team are crucial to shaping a positive culture”, says Gina O’Reilly, COO at Nitro (www.inc.com). To succeed with scaling your business, people need to adjust to changes in the scope of their role as the organization changes. All employees must be properly engaged, motivated, recognized and rewarded.

• Leverage technology: When you plan to scale your business, take stock of your software as well as your hardware and communication systems. Scaling through technology would differ depending on the type of business. Investing in the right technology is crucial to improve operational efficiency, result in huge economies of scale and maximize your returns on that investment.

• Manage sales: Experts say that sales operations are at the crux of scaling. You must have an effective strategy to generate more sales and revenue. According to a Cloudways article, you need to evaluate end-to-end sales and see you have enough leads, systems to manage leads, a strong sales team, a proper system to manage sales orders, and a billing and receivables system to collect all payments on time.

• Outsource strategically: Today, many organizations rely on outsourcing to manage their operations more efficiently and effectively. Outsourcing to scale your company will allow you to expand scale in specific areas of your business quickly, which you cannot do on your own. You can also avoid the development costs and testing processes that were necessary to develop the solution they are providing you with. Outsourcing helps you find qualified help quickly as you scale your business and allows your own staff to focus on core tasks. However, it is practical to use external help only when it lowers your real cost. For instance, when your documentation tasks scale up, professional transcription services are a feasible option as they can save up to 30-40% on your operational costs. If you need to hire more people, hire well so that you can delegate, focus on what’s important, and set specific timelines for achievement.

Ultimately, businesses need to fine-tune their positioning if they really want to scale, according to a Forbes article. To keep ahead of competition, they need to demonstrate their unique value proposition to potential customers. Maintaining product and service quality and consistency is necessary for scaling success. There are no short-cuts in scaling and growing a business. As online payroll software provider Wagepoint notes, “When you take shortcuts, you make compromises. You compromise your ethics, your values, and the integrity of your business – often at the expense of the customer and your employees”.