5 Tips for scaling up your SME

5 Tips for Scaling up your SME

Watching your business grow is an incredibly rewarding feeling, but as it does, you’ll need to adjust many aspects to cope with the added demand for your products or services. Here, Craig Hall, Operations Director at Glass Digital shares his top tips for scaling up your SME.

Your business is your livelihood, so when your SME begins to grow, you’ll want to make the best possible next moves to ensure that it continues to thrive. No matter what your upcoming goals are, you’ll want to give yourself the chance to achieve these, and keeping all of your operations the same as your company expands can make you unable to compete as well.

Whatever business growth looks like for your company, there are ways of scaling up your SME in an efficient way. Here, I will be sharing my top tips for doing so.

Consider moving to a bigger office space

If you feel your company outgrowing your current office space, it may be time to consider relocating to somewhere with a little more breathing space for your company to thrive in. However, it’s not as simple as picking the nicest place you see: the cost and upheaval of moving offices is something that needs to be carefully thought out as it could have a negative impact on your business should you choose the wrong spot.

For service-based businesses, it’s important to think about how the move will affect your current staff members, as well as how it would impact future growth for recruiting. When it comes to relocating, you need to think how well the move will work for everyone at your company, as well as for clients if you hold meetings with them in your own office. This means you’ll need to think about the transportation links and space for staff and visitor parking, as well as the social side of things like nice lunch spots and proximity to city centres and retail areas.

Expect your move to run not so smoothly

It’s much more settling to tell ourselves that everything will go to plan, but even the most well thought out plans will sometimes go off track. However, taking precautionary measures ahead of your business move can help you to keep everything under control.

Pre-planning for furniture and computers to be delivered to your new premises can ensure your staff are still able to carry out their duties without there being a crossover. The same applies for getting your office painted, having carpets laid or any other decorative elements you want in place before you move over.

With boxes and bags full of your stuff to be relocated, it’s inevitable for something to go missing or get broken along the way. This means that it’s always best to invest in a couple of spare pieces of equipment like keyboards, mice and computer monitors to cover you in case these incidents occur. Similarly, don’t expect your time scale of things to run completely smoothly. It’s always better to give yourself an extra day or two on top of your original completion date to ensure it’s all ready.

Think about investing in communication services

We live in a digital world, where almost everything is available to us online at the touch of a button. And, this means that many companies require a strong, constant internet and phone connection to be able to carry out a lot of their tasks. Investing in a communication service can take some of the pressure off you as a business, especially if your phones are voice over IP (VoIP) systems.

So, it’ll pay to invest in a stable connection and have a second line added to help load balance or fail-safe internet outages.

Protect your business values as you grow

It can be easy to get excited about your business growth, and for some companies, this can mean temporarily forgetting about their original business values. But, as these likely influenced the increase in demand for your product or service, it’s important that they remain at the forefront of everything you do.

For example, if your company culture encourages mingling between teams and creating a relaxed work environment, you won’t want to pick an office space which segregates the teams. Instead, going open plan can ensure your staff are still all able to enjoy each other’s company, as well as being close enough together to discuss work.

Identify future barriers to growth

Although you’ve already begun to grow as a company, you’re sure to come across some barriers along the way. Predicting what these may be, for example weak cash flow or a lack of leadership skills, can help you to bridge the gap and be prepared to overcome these as your company progresses.

Perhaps you need to create a new team to deal specifically with your sales, or you need to separate payment and sales departments to help you to monitor how your cash flows. Or, maybe the number of people you employ is expanding and you need somebody to head the different teams, so you can get on with other important tasks. Whatever your barriers may be, thinking ahead can make all the difference when you’re scaling up your SME.

Grow your business efficiently and effectively with my top five tips for scaling up your SME. You’re sure to see results when you plan ahead!