How to use tech to scale your business

BY CHIOMA IWUNZE-IBIAM

Have you hit your revenue and ROI targets for your business? If you’re thinking, “what next,” it’s probably time for you to scale and grow your business to the next level!

But how can you scale in a manner that is efficient and yet holds the promise of sustainable growth?

Enter smart solutions in the form of technology.

If you’re thinking of scaling your business without leveraging the various tech tools available in the market, you’re going about it the wrong way. Tech allows you to do more with less. 

Using the right tools for your operations can boost your profitability, motivate your employees, and keep you ahead of your competition. 

Scaling your business by employing tech can be useful in paving the road for your long-term success.

In this article, I’ll take you through why tech is the way to go for scaling your business, how you can go about it, and the recommended tools for you to explore. 

Let’s get started! 

Why is tech the solution you’re looking for?

Today, we live in a world powered by tech. Everything we see, touch, and feel around us is some way or the other powered by tech. So it’s no surprise tech is changing the way we live our lives. Particularly in commerce, tech has been great to solve traditional business problems effectively and efficiently. But this only related to brands that are forward-looking and willing to adopt the technology. Big Commerce, a huge e-commerce SaaS tool, describes this trend as digital transformation, “Digital transformation is the profound change that affects business processes, ecosystems, and models as they integrate digital technologies at all levels.”

It’s no surprise, smartest and most successful companies use a combination of human capital and tech to scale, grow, and conduct their day-to-day operations. 

Tech is a crucial component of streamlining business functions for many reasons. It fosters efficiency, boosts profits, and increases productivity. 

Seventy-two percent of small business owners believe investing in new technologies would boost their ROI more than hiring new employees. 

People often say that in business, time is money. This is where tech provides its first big perk. 

Tech can help automate business processes that would otherwise take multiple headcounts to perform. By lowering the time and effort spent on such tasks, the workforce can be redirected to high-value activities. 

At the time of scaling your business, you must redirect your employees to focus on strategic tasks that have long-term business development impact rather than go about manual, day-to-day tasks. 

Using tech in your scaling process will also help you gain a more in-depth insight into your business, its growing needs, and what you can do to best address them. 

Making the right decisions at this stage can make or break the long term progress and ‘big picture’ you want your business to reach.

What to consider before scaling your business 

Before introducing you to the tech tools available for you to help scale your business, you must consider certain factors, so you pick the right ones.

Here are some pointers to keep in mind and give serious consideration over as you form your business scaling plan.

How customer-focused is your business?

In the process of scaling, you should never lose sight of the audience your business exists to serve: your customers. 

Depending on how customer-focused your business model is, the tech tools you use will vary. You should ensure that the tech you use has the result of making your product/service more appealing and valuable to your customers. 

In your pursuit of growth and focus on using technology, you should not abandon your customer’s needs. For every dollar you’re investing in the tech solutions for scaling, do you forecast a healthy return?

An excellent way to confirm this is through usability testing. This is where you run a trial-model of your post-expansion product/service with a sample of your audience and see if the results are favorable.

This is a smart way to run a check on your scaled business model before making any substantial investments in the tech that will get you there.

How tech-savvy are your employees?

Speaking of tech, it’s crucial you know the capabilities of your existing employees and the ones you plan to hire before you invest in particular tools for scaling. 

Does your existing workforce have the capacity to handle more work? Will they integrate well with the solutions you choose? Will your new employees require training?

Employee onboarding is a crucial aspect of scaling that you should account for in your plans. You have to budget for the amount of time your workforce will spend in training and integrating into your grown business model. 

Furthermore, you should consider the possibility of leveraging automation and AI to aid this process along. 

There are smart HR software platforms available that can reduce the time spent on employee onboarding and redirect efforts to action-oriented tasks. Timeline makers can also help visualize this process for flawless communication during onboarding.

What is your financial feasibility?

They often say cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and this cannot be truer as you make plans to scale up. 

You must consider your financial feasibility and decide on how much you’re willing to contribute to scaling your business. 

How much of this can you allocate to tech? Are you in a position to invest and grow as of this moment? 

You must have a concrete expansion plan prepared, and the numbers match up with your ambition to see your business scale up. 

Product roundup: the tools to scale your business

Now, you’ve formed your expansion plan, and your transaction is ready to scale and grow to further heights. 

What tools can you employ to set you off on this journey?

Here are four to get you started, each helping you streamline different and significant aspects during the scaling of your business. 

Manage your evolving workforce with Time Doctor

One of the challenges you will face as you scale your business is managing your growing workforce, keeping track of the time invested, and how efficiently your employees are utilizing it. 

You might be engaged with multiple projects at this stage as you grow your business. Your commitments to your customers will increase as you aim to improve the markets you cater to. Your employees must deliver at this time. 

This is where a time tracking software can come in handy. 

Time Doctor, as the name suggests, is a time tracking software and productivity app that can help you manage oversight over how each of your employees, existing and new hires, are performing. 

In addition, Time Doctor automates routine employee management and employee monitoring tasks. For instance, it’s powerful dashboards generate timesheet reports that can help you evaluate performance and monitor employee productivity. Again, its inbuilt payroll module automatically calculates remuneration and salaries for both full-time and freelance workers.

Source: TimeDoctor

Using a tool like Time Doctor can help foster trust between the workers, integrate the workforce better to your growing business model, and boost employee productivity.

Remember: it’s crucial to keep morale high and going as you scale up!

Track your growing projects and commitments with Monday

Project management is one of the essential components to stay on top as you scale and grow your business. 

You cannot lose sight of your bigger goal: meeting your customer needs. As you grow, so will customer demands and the workload you take on to deliver tot hem. 

Monday is a team and project management tool that can help manage and keep track of deadlines, allocate responsibilities, and foster transparency between your workforce. This is especially crucial as you hire more employees and also manage your existing ones.

Source: Monday

You can customize your workflow depending on your growing project needs and use visual tools to create dashboards. It’s vital that everyone keeps sight of the bigger picture at this stage and do not get swayed or lost in the process of growth. 

Monday helps ensure a smooth workflow remains and also provides output reports to track your scaling progress.

Ensure effective communication with Chanty

At times of growth, your communication channels can take a hit. 

New employees will be added to your workforce, your organizational structure may grow taller as chains of command evolve, and with it, so will your communication. 

Your existing employees who are used to the old way of working may be resistant to the change or struggle to acclimate to the new business model. New employees may not be able to integrate well if they find the current environment too cluttered.

As your business scales, your employees should feel empowered, have clear reporting lines, and defined roles. There should be no room for misunderstandings. Bamboo Hr, a reputed HR SaaS company 

Tech can help address this through corporate messaging apps, like Chanty, that keep all your employees on the same page. 

Source: Chanty

Chanty is a software that can strengthen your workforce’s collaboration and communication needs by managing all correspondences and files in one platform.  Providing features such as sharing screens and files, connecting your apps, and even staying on the same page through text, voice, and video messages, Chanty is an all-inclusive platform. 

The interpersonal relationships required between employees to keep their morale high during this growth period can be focused on through the use of this app.

Boost customer relations Aivo-powered chatbots. Your business is growing. You’re excited, but so are your customers. This is the time for you to prove your money’s worth and deliver it to your customers.

As you scale, your customer base will grow, and with it, their expectations. The growth phase is a fragile period in your customer relationships, but if you can address their needs here, your profitability will boost in return. 

This is the stage where your customer service should be performing at its absolute best. However, the capacity required may be demanding and a strain on your workforce. 

Keeping this in mind, you can partner with an AI-powered chatbot software to interact and engage with your growing customers. For example, you could use tools like Aivo is one such tool you can use for this purpose. 

Source: Aivo

A chatbot can work as a virtual employee, catering to your customer’s direct queries and providing instant and satisfying results. 

Aivo makes this possible by possessing the AI-technology to make every conversation seem natural and engaging, allowing your customers to feel heard. 

Additionally, it provides performance reports that provide insights into customer engagement, such as the average time taken to service each customer, the number of transfers to your CRM workforce, and more. 

While scaling, it’s essential to stay on top of all your customer engagements. After all, what is the end-goal of your growth, if not to grow your customer base?

Start scaling with smart solutions

Scaling your business is no easy feat, but with a concrete plan and the right tech solutions at your fingertips, you can execute in a smooth manner that will have your business booming.

As you scale, remember that the ‘right tech’ to use can mean something different depending on the nature of your business and the environment it operates in.

Stay on top of the process by keeping all factors considered in your financial and operational planning and by leveraging the tools you most need for your business.

The higher you know the ins-and-outs of your own business, the better you can help it grow by scaling smartly. 

What tech tools do you prefer to use when scaling your business? Let us know in the comments.

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.