With a little forethought and planning, young businesses don’t always have to go through growing pains. What can an enterprise do to prevent the roadblocks of scaling too quickly? If problems do arise, how can a business minimize the damage to their momentum?
Demand Outpacing Supply
For small business owners, the thought of being too successful too quickly is probably never a concern. More business means more revenue, which is always a good thing, right? The short answer may be yes, but businesses that scale too quickly should proceed with caution. StitchLabs Operation Management talks about the dangers of growing too quickly. Rapid increases in sales mean being prepared to meet the newly increased demand. This can be especially tricky for an e-commerce business that depends on having enough inventory to stay ahead of the game.
Communication Between Departments
For a business, a breakdown in the chain of communication is one of the easiest ways to waste company time and resources. If your employees are spending valuable time trying to figure out what’s going on, that is time that isn’t spent furthering your business goals and earning more revenue.
Tigerpaw Business Automation Solutions presents this common conundrum: think about how much time your company wastes when employees in every department store customer information in different places? Even staffers in the same department can’t find the documents that others have worked on, and it gets exponentially worse when sales can’t see what the open service tickets are for their customers, and support can’t tell if a customer has paid their bills, and finance can’t see if a project is complete.
Scaling Too Quickly?
Problems of scalability don’t have to catch you by surprise. Tallyfy Digitization recommends that through careful, constant, real-time business health monitoring, you should be able to see the writing on the wall when problems are on the horizon. There are a few signs to look out for that are clues that a business’s rate of growth is outpacing its ability to sustain itself. These signs may include:
- Not meeting prescribed metrics for success
- Scaling in too many areas at once
- Your outflow of cash is higher than your income
- You are forced to compromise on the customer experience
Businesses just starting out can face a lot of issues once they begin to grow. From demand to communication problems, the whole process can be stressful. However, if your business is proactive about staying aware of these issues, there is a much lower chance of the company finding itself in hot water.
Whether you are just starting or trying to refine your process, let Create A Shoppe help! We can craft elegant ecommerce websites that will help you grow to where you want to be.
