What is business scalability? It’s the flexibility of all aspects of your operation that grow with the business — this includes things like accounting and marketing provisions, as well as production and even your telephone system.
In this article your will learn about the following:
- Your Business Scalability
- Investors Acquisition
- Partnerships
- Marketing
- Automated Solutions
- Stable Base
- The Team
- Education
- Scalable Business Examples
- Business Scalability Your Way
We, at MightyCall, believe in your success and our partnership with you, so we have laid out some of the advantages of having a scalable business as well as some practical ideas to get your small business on track to capitalize on the success you work so hard to achieve.
“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.”
James Cash Penney, Founder of JCPenney
Whether you already own a company or are just taking the first steps towards the startup of your dream, you most likely imagine a bright future. Those who are ambitious always reach for the stars, and almost any small business idea can grow into a big enterprise.
Let’s be honest though, certain concepts have more capacity for scalability and expansion. Estimate your chances of real growth while considering the following points:
1. Your Business Scalability
Look at your current business. If the business is based on the owner’s particular skill or talent, then scaling is harder. It can only grow within the limits of the person’s capability and stamina.
Services provided by experts are almost non-scalable. The skill can be taught, but training and quality improvement take time and resources.
A truly scalable business is one that keeps low marginal costs while increasing revenue and works efficiently with less involvement from the business owner.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
MightyCall offers a number of modern solutions such as additional numbers, international numbers, call recording, voice to text and many others.
2. Investors Acquisition
For investors, the best small business ideas are scalable. Startups that have a high potential for growth obtain sponsors. The power players don’t trust mere talk. They believe in a valid business plan and financial model. High profits, minimum employees, and low support — these are crucial criteria of gaining investor’s attention.
How many locations can you market with the product? Investors bankroll startups that can go worldwide.
Match your business concept so that it is attractive to sponsors, and let us advise you on how to fund small business and find your investor.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
First of all, MightyCall helps lower your monthly phone bill so you don’t have to worry about running up your phone bill or calling long distances.
Additionally, with MightyCall you never have to worry about missing a call with call routing, after hours and call back widgets.
Finally, MightyCall offers international numbers so your business can grow with you.
3. Partnerships
Try to build a trusted business relationship with other market players.
Starting together as green implementers of small business ideas, you may share experience and discuss relevant issues. Collaboration and outsourcing reduce costs and make time for business development.
Even titans of the market chose to cooperate.
In 2006, Nike and Apple announced a partnership. Products of this union are fitness devices that connect to each other.
Making partners with existing market players is a forward-looking approach. It’s more advantageous than trying to outdistance them. In addition, franchising is one of the proven ways to scaling.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
MightyCall lets you add unlimited extensions to your plan so you can create as many partnerships as you want and not spend a dime more on your phone bill.
4. Marketing
Don’t delay an efficient marketing strategy if you want your small business to become a market leader.
A startup needs to be noticed immediately.
It’s not about local promos and advertising campaigns, which are useful to attract clients here and now, it is about joining a global market and getting access to business conferences as well as participating in workshops. These are places to network and make proper acquaintances in different fields.
Visit Meetup.com for relevant events near your location. LinkedIn is also a rich platform of information, communities and events.
Invest in your business brand. It is a valuable asset that demonstrates who you are, what your defining feature is. It should be simple but noticeable.
Marketing is a continual process. Keep updating your product line, so you can attract new clients and innovate. Ask customers for feedback and work with their replies. People buy from those they trust. Remember, “Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.” (Don Peppers & Martha Rogers, Return on Customer).
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
It creates brand consistency by allowing you to always be available to your customers in whatever capacity you choose with personal greetings and hold music that helps your brand essence show.
Furthermore, it allows you to integrate your phone system with your Facebook and Twitter.
5. Automated Solutions
Appraise your business processes. There are always repeated steps and circular activities that can be automated. This frees time for focusing on business growth.
Business process management consultants say that reduction of staff work-hours is possible with proper automation. For example, instead of depending on manual data entry and setting appointments, invest in a system that simplifies the work process for employees. Newcomers can then be trained quickly and easily and join the workflow without delay.
Carla Martinez, former PM at HICKIES (sneakers store), shared a success story of scaling due to “automating everything”. HICKIES used Zapier’s software for workflow automation. Zapier transfers data between web apps automatically without additional coding. All processes became sped up.
A business that provides services is built on a number of experts, their workload, and efficiency. While considering the scaling of this kind of business, the entrepreneur should particularly focus on automation. It can result in additional revenue with fewer labor hours.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
Sometimes you need to be other places, doing other things. With MightyCall, you can easily reroute the numbers to an available team member or post after hours information. There’s a call queue feature as well as a VIP or block list feature all of which assist with automating the process and letting you decide what’s the most important thing for you to spend your time on in any given moment.
6. Stable Base
When a business is just launched it is the best time to invest in a solid foundation. Avoid cheap and quick software solutions; it’s not powerful enough for a growing entity.
The best software is one that is suited to a small business idea and can support it while growing, and maintain a huge enterprise while using regular updates.
Effective ERP system, e-commerce software, or communication platforms provide automation for most business processes. This is core for business scalability.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
It’s a customized communication solution for any size and type of business. A cloud-based unified platform that provides reliable management of calls, e-mails, social media, and to-do lists, while many useful features (conference calls, activity queue) can be used and added.
Another example is a Xero accounting system.
The vendor offers a free trial for small businesses. Cashflow, invoicing, payments, pay runs — up-to-date financial data that’s easy to compare, maintain and review is what’s essential for each growing company.
Outsourcing of the business support services to professionals is worthwhile. You can concentrate on the core business.
7. The Team
No doubt you’ve put your heart in the realization of your small business idea, but the truth is that a large business can be overwhelming for an owner. You can’t control everything and be everywhere. Scalable business means you are less involved in its processes; your role transforms more and more into high-level supervision.
Build a strong team to do what they do best. Hire the right people so you can manage a scaled business without making every slightest decision.
How MightyCall can help with this part of the process:
It’s a customized communication solution for any size and type of business. A cloud-based unified platform that provides reliable management of calls, e-mails, social media, and to-do lists, while many useful features (conference calls, activity queue) can be used and added.
Another example is a Xero accounting system.
The vendor offers a free trial for small businesses. Cashflow, invoicing, payments, pay runs — up-to-date financial data that’s easy to compare, maintain and review is what’s essential for each growing company.
Outsourcing of the business support services to professionals is worthwhile. You can concentrate on the core business.
The best company structure is streamlined so that trusted people have leading positions. As head of the company, a business owner needs to focus on their main strengths and landmark issues.
8. Education
Investing into your and your team’s education is one of the most powerful strategies a business owner can implement to become more scalable.
“The greatest asset of a company is its people.” – Jorge Paulo Lemann, a Brazilian billionaire investment banker and businessman
Developing this asset by sending your team members to various workshops, courses, or even universities, will eventually result a team of devoted specialists who will apply their new skills and knowledge directly to your business. Your team will feel like it is growing and developing in the direction that interests them, which will make them want to stay and do more for the company.
Scalable Business Examples
- Software — a classic and obvious sample of a scalable business. Once the product is ready, additional copies are released with much lower costs.
- E-commerce — any product or service provided via the internet is scalable. Information business, webinars, some kinds of consulting services can be delivered to the mass of people using only a Skype camera and microphone.
- Replicated products — are similar to the previous bullet. Today online stores compete favorably with shopping malls. Extension of delivery regions and product variety are just two points to consider for scaling opportunity.
- Social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. It seems like any new platform for sharing photos and impressions is welcomed. As recently as 2015, Periscope (a worldwide video-sharing source) and The League (a dating application for the “elite”) appeared.
- Downloads — music, books, games, applications are similar to a software’s scalability. The once launched app can be downloaded thousands of times a day.
- Line production and franchising — most processes of line commodity production are automated. The net cost is relatively low, but always keep an eye on the quality. Never let down clients’ expectations, it forms loyalty. When a person comes to McDonald’s, they want almost the same Big Mac they had the previous time. Ray Kroc set a standard of the smallest specifications including weight, sauce amount and fat content in every burger.
Business Scalability Your Way
On the path to scale your business, don’t let failures break you down. Instead, make it work for you and learn your lesson. Dream big and let no one unsettle you on your way and let MightyCall partner with you as you continue to grow your business.
