Looking to scale up a business is every company owner’s dream and ambition. If you are a business owner, then you would agree that growing your business and generating more revenue is always the goal and top priority, whether the establishment is new or has been around for a while.

While it is good to have this goal and mindset, it is also crucial for business owners to understand what scalability is and what it actually entails.

With this, in today’s blog, we will answer the following:

• What does it mean to scale up your business?
• Why is scalability crucial for businesses?
• What are the common challenges in scaling up a business?
• What are some practical tips on how to prepare a business for scale-up?

What does it mean to scale up your business?

First, it must be clarified that scaling a business is not as simple as merely growing it. While growth is the essence of scaling a business, just as important is the capability and capacity of the business to actually undergo growth. Does your business, including your people, have the capacity and ability to grow?Are your current systems and processes not hindering business growth? What about your infrastructure, technology, and, most importantly, your finances?

Thus, scaling up your business means planning and preparing to enable and support the contemplated expansion of your company. It means setting the stage to allow growth. Remember, even if a business owner wants to scale the business, and even if he has already come up with a plan to actually implement the scale-up, if the establishment and its systems are, in themselves, not ready, then growth will not easily take place, if at all.

Why is scalability crucial for businesses?

On a related note, scalability is crucial in wanting to grow–and actually growing–a business. To put it simply, scalability refers to the ability of the company to expand and increase its revenue, given the increase in demand for its products or services. It means being able to increase the performance of the business, maintain it, and adapt to all the adjustments that come with it, all while minimising the operational costs and risks.

Definitely, if a business, its processes, and its people are not ready and able to meet increased demand, expansion would be costly, if not unfeasible.

What are the common challenges in scaling up a business?

Challenges when it comes to scaling a business will, of course, vary for every company, depending on the circumstances. Some of the most common challenges are:

• Premature scaling: This means scaling too early, or scaling without a definite plan and/or risk assessment yet. This could also happen to a business that may have already planned out the scaling process, but was not yet able to prepare the operations for actual expansion and implementation.
• Failure to adapt: As mentioned above, scaling necessarily includes major adjustments in the operations of the business. If the business and the people who run it are not able to adapt to the developments that come with scaling, the company will not be able to realise maximum profits and benefits of the scale-up.
• Talent shortage: Expanding the business would undoubtedly entail increasing the company’s manpower. Business owners would know that hiring the right people is not easy–especially for those who do not know where to look and outsource talents.

What are some practical tips on how to prepare a business for scale-up?

Apart from the obvious, that is, laying all the groundwork, effectively preparing a business for scale-up all boils down to hiring and keeping the right people. These ‘right’ people mean those who are not only skilled at what they do, but, more importantly, are able to efficiently adapt to the developments that your business will undergo. As mentioned earlier, you will need a team who can easily adjust to the changes, with operational costs, productivity, and work quality not negatively and/or drastically affected.

By ‘hiring and keeping the right people,’ we do not mean employing twice or thrice the number of your current workforce. We acknowledge that having to double or triple the number of your employees is highly costly, and is thus unproductive in terms of scaling a business.

What business owners must understand is that scaling up a business can materialise without having to actually take into employment–and train and upskill–a lot of talents.

There is a practical and more effective alternative: outsourcing talents by engaging the services of virtual assistants. Many companies are doing it, and many have been able to scale up through it–and Scale-Up-Outsourcing can help you start.

Scale-Up-Outsourcing has a pool of competent virtual assistants, all of whom have been especially and further trained by us, free of charge. Based in Northampton in the East Midlands, Scale Up offers long-term cost-efficient remote support through our team of skilled VAs from the UK and other parts of Europe.

Let Scale-Up-Outsourcing help you as you scale up your business.

We provide cost-effective services and, most importantly, cost-effective solutions.
To learn more about Scale-Up-Outsourcing and its offers, send us an email.