If you are a small or medium sized enterprise (SME), this past year and it’s COVID impacts are something that you definitely want to put behind you. There are a lot of signs that business coming out of the pandemic is going to pick up. Is your firm ready for it?
If you already have an established market presence, then managing growth comes down to five basic elements:
Do You Have the Appropriate Financial Resources?
Growth is an investment. This may be a time to review your business model, pricing or even capital markets to ensure you have enough runway to fuel your growth and scale plans.
Do You Have a Clear Strategy?
Is it time to refresh your Core Values and Vision? As business rebounds, what are your big strategic goals and key strategies to achieve them? Everyone in your organization needs to understand your strategic plan and their role in making it a reality.
Do You Have the Right People?
Perhaps your team is thin on leadership or requires key talent to take the business to the next level. Or could it be something simpler? Often companies limit their success by not sharing strategies, not aligning on key objectives, not ensuring performance is managed, or that employee development is not planned and people are not properly supported.
You will be amazed at how much your team can achieve if everyone is aligned and managing to well defined goals. Assembling a strong team with a talent for growth begins by attracting the right people through identified culture and a strong employee value proposition.
Keep employees feeling fulfilled and challenged by offering appropriate development resources such as leadership training (these programs often have the added bonus of driving retention rates up). Do you have any compensation or recognition initiatives to incentivize existing team members?
Will Your Existing Business Processes Support Growth?
Many companies start with basic processes for sales, supply chain management and customer support that aren’t scalable for a business and will not support higher growth rates. Trying to expand your business with processes that can’t sustain growth is a painful non-starter. However, driving a continuous improvement mindset and planning for growth will improve process repeatability, reduce errors, improve efficiency and will drive customer and employee satisfaction.
Are You Leveraging the Right Technologies to Grow?
It may be time to audit the technological resources that support your business to ensure that they are facilitating your growth objectives. For some this may require an acceleration of a digital transformation for your business such as leveraging CRM, ERP and data analytics. For others it may require active product/service life cycle management to improve your offerings, take advantage of industry advancements or simply some product renewal to improve security of supply and cost management.
Stratford can help you manage the challenges your company is facing in today’s turbulent business environment. Stratford’s Scale Advantage Program can help define your Strategic Goals and achieve sustainable business growth.
Stratford Management Consulting has worked with companies of all sizes to assist with meeting their business objectives and growth targets. Combining years of expertise with an emphasis on strategy and execution, we work with your company to move you to the next level in a sustainable manner. Reach out to us today to see how we can help you achieve your potential.