Upscaling is a huge task for any business. There are many challenges that require businesses to come out of their comfort zone and take risks to grab new opportunities.
If you are looking to scale up your business, that means you are running a successful business and are ready to take your business to a new height.
Upscaling a business involves many things that you need to keep your eye on everything around. In this article, you will learn about some key things to consider while upscaling your small business.
But at first, you need to be absolutely certain that it’s the right time to upscale.
When is the right time to upscale a small business?
While running a small business, you need to identify the right moment when it’s time to upscale your business. Scaling up too early puts a very bad impact on small businesses. Premature scaling is one of the big causes why most small businesses fail.
That means you need to wait for the right time. Here are some major indicators which indicate your business is ready to scale up.
- When businesses have a high workload, and there aren’t enough employees.
- When businesses don’t have enough manpower and resources to attain long-term goals.
- When businesses cannot handle the increasing number of potential leads.
8 things to consider while upscaling a small business
Once a small business is ready for upscaling, it needs to focus on many major things that is crucial while upscaling their business. Here are 8 of them:
- Always plan one step ahead
Upscaling a business is a very difficult process. Small businesses will fail to properly scale their business range and capabilities without definite planning.
Generally, planning involves detailed documentation of executive summary, financial planning, objectives, market analysis, and business activities.
It may be different for different businesses, but the end goal of systematically upscaling their business by following a set of well-defined planning steps is the same.
A proper planning keeps businesses one step ahead of failing miserably because they already have plans to tackle any issues that might come into play. Even if they fail, they will have a backup plan to compensate for their loss.
- Get the right tools and software
One of the key steps of upscaling a business is getting the right set of tools and software to handle your business processes.
Scaling only your employees is not enough to do the work the right way. You need to invest in necessary solutions to upscale the business with fewer employees.
Tools and software are way cheaper than hiring someone. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to hire, but it means you can hire only those actually necessary.
You need to get different tools and software for streamlining your workplace. Here are some of them:
- Communication platform
A communication platform is necessary to connect your employees and customers for business communication. It enables you to effortlessly communicate with employees to handle business processes. Also, marketing and sales teams can use it to generate leads and conversions.
Whether you are setting up new branches in or out of the country, adding more employees, or getting international customers, all you need is a virtual cloud phone system.
Virtual cloud phone systems offer cheap virtual phone numbers for SMS and calls, which can either be local or international. So be it catering to your local audiences or outreaching your business abroad while scaling your business, a virtual cloud phone system can offer a huge help.
Also, in a cloud phone system, all the contacts and call logs are synced to the cloud so your team won’t miss anything. Moreover, it can virtually connect multiple offices in one platform without needing to get different phone services.
You can easily add multiple workspaces and add new employee user accounts without needing additional hardware requirements.
- Customer Relational Management (CRM) tools
Customer information is very important for any business. Businesses evaluate this information to determine the characteristics of the target audience. As we know, upscaling a business also increases the number of customers if everything goes according to the plan.
More customers mean more information. This is where CRM tools come into play. It stores all the customer information on one platform. Employees can access the information quickly with very little effort.
CRM tools are great for improving relation relationships with customers. And the good thing is most of the cloud-based services supports integration with CRM software, including cloud telephony.
When you integrate cloud telephony with a CRM software, it adds value for making conversation with customers. Zoho, Salesforce, etc., are some of the popular CRM tools.
- Productivity tools
As a business upscales, the number of work and workload also increases. Businesses need to keep track of all the tasks, and they can do it with productivity tools.
Productivity tools enable businesses to organize their workspace by managing their project tasks and deadlines. Businesses can improve the efficiency of employees by managing time using time tracking apps.
Process automation is also a key element of productivity tools. With automation, businesses can automate repetitive tasks at a low cost and improve employee productivity. Asana, ProofHub, Automate.io, etc., are some productivity tools.
- Keep one eye on the budget
If you want to upscale your small business, you need to allocate a defined budget. Upscaling a business involves getting more resources and employees.
There is the process of upgrading the technology to handle the processes of an upscaled company.
That’s means before starting upscaling a business. You need to gather financial support and create a budget plan. This is a necessary step to envision your business processes.
You will need to spend money accordingly where it is absolutely necessary. Avoid spending on things that will not support the purpose of your business. Also, don’t get carried away on getting too much at once. Make sure you spend your budget only on necessary things at present time.
- Hire the right people or outsource
While upscaling, businesses will require more people as the workload will increase. Businesses should evaluate how much more employees they need to hire to balance the work in different departments.
During the hiring process, you need to make sure you pick the right candidate with the necessary skills and contribute to the growth of your business.
Alternatively, you can outsource your business work to third-party companies instead of hiring more employees.
Third-party companies already consist of the required employees and resources to perform certain tasks more efficiently than your business that is in the process of upscaling.
If there are other companies that can do your work quickly and cheaply, then it’s wise to depend on them. Outsourcing task to third-party companies is a great way to scale up faster and with less money. Such an approach will gain trust with other companies and manage your business processes.
- Let people know who you are
Marketing plays a big role in upscaling a small business. You can increase your employees, make more products, or get the right tools, but people won’t get interested in your product or services without marketing.
Businesses need to allocate some portion of the budget for advertisement. They need to come up with creative sales and marketing strategies to attract more target audiences.
Every business first needs to understand its niche. This way, they can focus on what exactly they want to offer to the people. Branding is the best way to let people know what kind of business you have.
- Take notes from competitors
It’s always good to learn from other businesses, especially your competitors. Knowing how your competitor is upscaling their business is good to compare with your approach.
You can learn from your competitors how the new changes impact their business. If the impact is positive, it will help your business to follow a similar approach with your modifications.
However, if the impact is negative, it gives you a great opportunity to know where things went wrong. This can help you make changes to your plans and avoid the same mistake your competitors made.
- Listen to an expert advice
There is no rule that only people inside the office can advise on how to upscale the business. You can get an expert opinion from a third party for suggestions. This is actually a really healthy practice to see your business progress from an outside eye.
You need to consult an industry expert related to your business type. They will tell you a detailed overview of how you can upscale the business as well as compete against your competitor.
Scaling a business is necessary but risky because competitors may have the same intention and approach of upscaling. You could be late to deliver at the right time and suffer huge losses. That’s why expert advice is crucial.
Also, take advice from layers from legal matters. There are times when upscaling can involve legal issues that you should definitely avoid.
- Leadership is the key
Leadership is the ultimate element of upscaling a small business. You yourself or someone in your office who can envision an upscaled-up business and lead the path need to take the responsibility to achieve the goal.
The leader should focus on the business rather than day-to-day operations. He/she should manage the staff to do the daily task.
The leader should come to work with the intent of developing something bigger, leaner, and more efficient than the day before. They should motivate the team to automate and standardize their daily routines.
Conclusion
All successful small businesses will need to scale up at a certain point in time. As a businessman, you need to identify the exact time for upscaling your business.
Make sure you cover all the necessary things your business needs to go to the next level. Cover the aforementioned things to avoid hitting a wall or failing to upscale your business.
