Four ways IT can help scale small businesses

When you own a business, you have to have one eye on the future at all times. How are changing lockdown restrictions going to affect my business’ sales?

If a different party gets elected at the next election, how is the amount of tax I have to pay going to change?

These are just a minute selection of circumstances that can fundamentally alter the way your business operates.

If you’re intent on growing your business sustainably, you need to learn how to scale your business.

Rapidly increasing the size of your business in a short amount of time is impossible without the right tech.

In this piece, we’ve explained what scalability (as it applies to business) is and how a strong IT system allows you to morph the size of your business quickly and easily.

What is scalability?

Simply put, scalability is something’s capacity to handle a rising amount of work and increase resources accordingly to deal with that growth.

In a business context, scalability refers to your company’s ability to cope with an expanding workload.

In the last few years, scalability has become a bit of a buzzword in business circles – especially in the fiercely competitive and oversaturated world of tech start-ups.

If you want your business to appeal to investors – a vital source of funding for budding entrepreneurs – you have to prove that your concept is scalable.

If your business unexpectedly taps into a rich vein of potential income but you don’t have the resources to capitalise on it, you risk sullying your business’ reputation with a weakened, overstretched offering.

You may have just missed a unique opportunity to position your business as a market leader – and you can blame your failure to take advantage of it on your lack of scalability.

Essentially, scalability comes down to good planning and we’ll explain why a solid IT infrastructure can make achieving it so much easier.

Cloud-based services

The cloud allows you to access all your data from any device, anytime, anywhere. Freed from the restrictive confines of local servers and hard drives, you can get all the resources you need whenever you need them.

If, as hoped for, your business has carved out a profitable space in the market and your customer base is steadily growing, you’ll need to bring in more employees to contend with it.

Binary Blue, an IT services company, agree:

“Cloud-based services allow you to scale instantly. Typically, you can reach out to your provider and ask for more storage as your requirements evolve over time.”

It really is that simple when the bulk of your operations take place in the cloud.

Analytics/data management

Data is the world’s most valuable resource.

In times past, it might have been gold or oil, today it’s indisputably data: five of the world’s most valuable companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft) traffic in data. Collectively, they’re worth tens of billions of pounds.

Data should inform every decision you make.

Thinking of targeting a slightly different niche with your next product?

Data can tell you if it’s a viable approach. Curious about the implications of expanding your operations in a country outside of your core market? You can gauge potential interest in such a move using analytics. It really is invaluable.

If your organisation doesn’t have the infrastructure to collect, store and sift through data, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to make informed decisions about your business’ future, jeopardising your ability to keep pace with your competitors.

Customer acquisition

In today’s hyper-connected age, it’s more convenient than ever before to market your products and services to audiences anywhere and everywhere. We can communicate with people all over the world using our phones, tablets and laptops.

Digital advertising – particularly through social media – gives us the chance to make a case about our wares to a target market at the tap of a button. The masses of data social media companies keep on their users allows for a staggering level of market segmentation. If you want to, you can specify exactly what kind of people you want to see your ads.

For example, you can target by gender, age and location. Retargeting allows companies to push their products in front of users based on their internet history.

If they’ve already had a look at a particular product on your website, you can then bombard them with the product when they login to their social media accounts.

An understanding of the benefits of online advertising – and the knowledge and technical expertise to wring the most value out of these online tools – can speed up your company’s growth drastically.

System integration allows all parts of your business to communicate

As your business continues to grow, there is going to be a need for new areas of development.

It might mean you have completely new teams or you adopt new pieces of software. To ensure that there is a constant line of communication between different teams – and systems remain updated with the latest information as they go through different iterations – you need to take care to integrate whatever systems you are using.

When communications become siloed – or systems are plagued with outdated and antiquated information – teams are prevented from getting the relevant information they need to do their jobs successfully. Enlisting the help of IT professionals who know how to get the most out of your existing architecture – or implement a new, integrated alternative – can help prevent your communications from becoming blinkered.

Whatever your requirements are, it’s clear that investing heavily in a robust, adaptable and intuitive IT system will make your business far more scalable.

Whether you need to take more employees onboard or find a way to expand your customer base, the right software choices can help you realise your ambitions.