How to Grow Your Business by The Accountant LLC - HTML preview

Step 6: Amplify your capability

Do you have the capability to run a business that is two, three or ten times bigger than you are now? Does your business have the capability to cope with a much larger operation? Take stock of your situation now and plan to increase capability and handle your inevitable growth.

To make this easier consider:

• Having key staff in place to manage a larger operation
• Delegating duties so you can manage the business
• Planning a training schedule ahead of time
• Conducting a skills analysis to identify any gaps.

As you grow you will find that productivity is increasingly important. Small improvements in how you accept orders, process work and deliver to the final customer can result in extra profit.

This is especially important if you need additional equipment or space. Capability building is about increasing your business’s ability to do more internally – such as speeding up production or improving your systems and processes.

You may have to invest in new technology and new ways of working to maintain your margins. Create a workflow plan to identify any possible bottlenecks that may occur in the future so you can plan to minimise them. Be sure to:

• Calculate how quickly you can scale
• Determine whether you need more people, more equipment, more room or more supplies
• Have contingency plans to respond if demand exceeds your ability to supply, such as outsourcing to other businesses, employing contractors or sub-contracting work
• Make sure any growth you achieve is sustainable, including having any necessary long-term orders, guaranteed contracts or agreements in place that allow you to increase your capacity with confidence.

What you can add to increase capacity

While it’s important to maximise your internal resources, scaling your business for growth almost always means adding to your operations in terms of staff, equipment, facilities and finance.

The right staff

The right staff is critical for your business to grow. If there are vital gaps in skills among your staff, look at training them or hiring someone with the knowledge and experience you need.

It’s also important to have the staff you need to meet increased demand. If you’re selling orders online and the fulfilment team can’t keep up, then it’s definitely worth hiring more.

Equipment and facilities

You don’t want your business growth to be hampered by not having the right equipment to do the job or the facilities to do it in. If you want to increase production or services, it’s likely that the location you’re in and the facilities you’re using now won’t be adequate to meet the new demand.

• Location – move to a new, larger location or open another branch of your business
• Equipment – to increase production on a scalable level, you’ll need the equipment
• Suppliers – if you’re going to need more raw materials to produce what you’re selling, look at changing to suppliers you know can meet the increased demand.

Business structure

Your business structure is often the first thing to change when your business grows, particularly if you start as a sole trader and then want to take on a partner or register as a company.

Choosing the right business structure is an important decision, so you need to investigate each option carefully to decide which best suits your needs.