Today’s vibrant economy has been running for quite a while and many firms have grown substantially. Some companies have grown through a plan but many others have not, leading to internal chaos. For them, it is time to develop a scaling up plan to continue growth or risk the sustainability of the company.
To create a scaling up plan, it is important to start with who your target market is and what they want from you. This process defines the who, what and why for your sales plan. That, in turn, will define the scope of your scale-up over a set period. Market definition, revenue forecast, and product/service development must be your starting point.
Next, your human capital plan must be developed to determine what additional talent needs to be recruited to support scale-up. This plan is essential for refining the timing and cost when scaling up. In the current tight job market, the acquisition of talent is challenging and costly, especially when adding to your leadership team.
One step that is often overlooked is the communication plan. How are you going to make sure that all employees understand the why and what of your scale-up plan? How will they know what their role is and what new opportunities are available to them? This is a crucial step in maintaining a supportive culture.
After completing these three big steps, its time to think through what operating processes need to change or be developed to support the larger operation. You have some insight from the human capital plan when deciding who is needed to fill new functions or larger workloads. Developing the infrastructure plan is where all the messy details must be outlined. What processes are needed to support sales, customer care, marketing, services or product production, warehousing/logistics, HR, accounting, IT, and administration? Estimating these details will take some effort and time.
OK, what is all this going to cost and where will the money come from? Building a financial model will define the financial requirements of the scale-up plan. The financial reality will likely cause some adjustment in your thinking on timing and with revising the scope of your scale-up. It may be that raising new capital is required which adds time to the plan, and it is likely that you will need to revise everything to fit your financial capacity.
We are helping multiple clients through this process. We help them ask the right questions and balance their priorities between success today and tomorrow. To paraphrase: “You may have all the answers but are they to the right questions?” We have been there and done it successfully before.
If this process seems too complex for you, don’t put it off. We can help you figure out your needs. We offer two hours of free consultation with no strings attached. Just call us or send an email.
