If your business has existed for at least 2-3-4 years, then you can certainly say that you have passed the critical path of survival and have proven your worth. This is very good because most cannot pass this hole. However, the question arises – what next? Business optimization, growth, or something else?
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Business optimization, inaction, and scaling
In my opinion, there are fundamentally 3 directions in which an established business can move. Of course, the classification can be carried out in different directions – we will consider from the point of view of the organizational development of the enterprise.
The first is the optimization of business process management and risk reduction:
I suppose that now your business is still full of unsolved problems, many risks (legal, human, financial). Somewhere you hope for the adequacy of people, somewhere on the “so accepted”, somewhere on the fact that you will be noticed (or not noticed), somewhere on the universally working “maybe”.
It is likely that you are choosing the path of continuous iterative optimization of business process management. You reveal your “broken windows” and patch them on the go. Thus, your business is gradually reaching a new level of quality due to small steps in this direction.
How to do it? The simplest is automation and innovation. Automation is done through the implementation of CRM or ERP. About creating your own CRM.
For innovations, you must constantly move them, because there will be a natural inert resistance in the organization. If your business is agricultural related then farmtrace is the best way to move forward with the process and supply chain management.
There are other more targeted means, but, in general, most of them can be attributed to these two categories.
The second is to do nothing
Why not. The business works, it does not ask for much food. You can just leave for 3 months to rest … then come and start all over again.
The fact is that it is very likely that without your participation and adjustments, things will quickly leak. My deep conviction is that everything moves either up or down. Nothing stands still. You become either stronger or weaker.
If you do not take action, then most likely someone else will do these actions for you.
This option is only possible if you have a strong executive director and you trust him completely. However, even in this case, you should at least keep your finger on the pulse.
The third is to scale
This is the most difficult option. If you take the analogy with fitness or bodybuilding – this is a set of masses. This is the maximum stress for the body (compared to working on the relief). Any rapid business growth is accompanied by risks and possible problems.
You can grow in different ways:
In breadth – we do the same, but we provide more orders, and more people are needed to service these orders.
Up – we offer new services, we expand our line of services. New services require new competencies, if you plan to grow at the expense of new services, and then get ready to introduce completely new processes, to new rakes, to new approaches. Not the fact that what worked for you will work in terms of new services.
New types of customers – Serving one group of people or companies, and now you will serve other groups. For example, we served individuals, and now we are working with companies. Or another example – we worked in the Russian Federation, now we are working with Europe.
Transformation is the provision of an old service, but in a new way – This can be a joint work with partners, the use of new technologies (for example, an independent order by a client through a personal account on the site).
Each of us knows about such a thing as my income ceiling, and each one has his own. It is the growth of the enterprise that drives this ceiling. No business optimization dramatically changes the ceiling, but it is needed to ensure this possible growth, and not turn it into a disaster.
Any rapid business growth is accompanied by risks and possible problems:
Imagine that you are producing pans and you have a quality problem. If you begin to grow actively, you will only exacerbate this problem. It is important to find the right time to manage your business growth.
That is all. What you need is to understand what direction you have chosen. Analyze your business development strategy. Are there any side effects that you did not take into account? In the next article, we will just consider one of the options for strategic business development based on working with partners.
