You Can’t Sustain Your Business Growth Without This
Have you heard the saying, ‘what got you here won’t get you there’?
It’s admittedly a little cliché. But its message holds a powerful truth that business owners should take to heart, particularly as they scale: as your business expands, the systems and processes that might have gotten you here today, will not suffice to grow your company 2x, 3x, or greater.
Want your business to double or triple? OF COURSE YOU DO! But hopefully you’re planning for systems and processes now, because that’s something many SMEs often realise too late. The result? A chaotic growth process that leads to scrambling staff, dissatisfied customers, and overall lost opportunities.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Scaling your business without proper systems is a recipe for disaster
When you’re a small business, systems and processes don’t seem that important. Things are simple — you and your small team (or even just you) can easily manage internal and external demands in one way or another. Fulfilling orders or meeting service requests is highly manageable, even easy. You think this is the way it’s always going to be.
But the business world isn’t a linear one. Things change after a certain level of growth, and if you’re not ready for it, you’re going to be in for a tough time. Suddenly, you might find things like requests, invoices or projects getting passed around from department to department. Your staff is working in silos instead of together as a unit. Simplicity devolves into unmanageable complexity.
But this isn’t your staff’s fault. People pass work around because they’re unsure whether they’re the ones responsible for it. And they don’t want to be burdened by repetitive mundane tasks. They operate in silos because they don’t know how often or if they are supposed to collaborate with other departments.
If this is the result, it’s because the proper systems weren’t put in place to support orderly business growth. As the Harvard Business Review puts it, poor internal organisation does nothing but cause problems:
“…confusion within roles, a lack of coordination among functions, failure to share ideas, and slow decision-making bring managers unnecessary complexity, stress, and conflict.”
Systems and processes — a necessary evil
The stereotype of large organisations is that they are slow, bureaucratic, and weighed down by the sheer volume of systems and processes they have. While there’s a certain truth to that, there’s a reason why these big and successful businesses have them. They are essential to imposing order on the exponentially growing complexity that comes with business growth — and small businesses looking to achieve this scale (or anything similar) need them too.
Looking down on these big businesses as lumbering and inefficient is a mistake. While they are not perfect, they have achieved a level of growth far beyond the average SME. There are many lessons SMEs can glean from observing these businesses, and the importance of systems and processes is a major one.
A framework for systems and processes that work (and how Grab for Business can help)
Harvard Business School’s Scaling Ventures — a go-to course for startup founders and senior leaders — recommends business owners look at six broad areas during the implementation of growth transformation:
- Staff: What sort of processes do you have for avoiding the costs of mis-hires? How can you maximise their productivity and keep them happy?
- Shared Values: In the beginning, company culture typically follows the owner’s personality and values. If you want them to continue, they must be made explicit to all members. How can you do so?
- Structure: You might be making all the important business decisions in the beginning. But that cannot last. How can you delegate decision-making and provide the right incentives for success? Even better, how many ‘business as usual’ processes can be automated?
- Speed: Growing too fast is a mistake. What processes can ensure the speed of business growth is appropriate to what the business can support?
- Scope: Where do you grow — which markets should you expand into? Are there systems for categorising and evaluating your various growth options? And when you do expand, how do you maintain consistency across borders and with different regulations?
- Series X: If your company needs financing to grow, what processes and compliance regimens need to be implemented to satisfy potential investors’ requirements?
While the exact systems and processes will vary from business to business — digital transformation tools and/or SaaS platforms can help your SME address the above ‘Six S’ framework.
The payoffs will be worth it, but the journey won’t be easy. That’s why we created Grab for Business, to make it easier for operations like yours to manage the business processes you need to move forward.
- Staff — easily manage your employees’ transportation in an efficient way — no pasting receipts — saving them time and hassle!
- Structure — integrate Grab for Business with other travel and expense management solutions like Concur. Set automated claims and cost management policies
- Scope — Grab for Business is seamless across Southeast Asia
- Series X — Set and manage company-wide policies to make sure you meet compliance and investor targets on operating expenses.
Our Grab for Business portal is a one-stop interface you can use — to not only digitise your day-to-day business processes — but also manage workflow, like claim policies, employee management and budget reporting. The business journey is a difficult one. And in the same way we’ve enabled Southeast Asians with a digital super-app for their day-to-day life, we want to do the same for your business with our Grab for Business Portal.
Help your business scale faster today. www.grab.com/business
