Experiencing rapid business growth may be the best thing ever happening to you as a business owner. Your product or service may be extremely in demand, and it can be not easy to manage your business if you do not have a growth strategy.

A rise in cash flow can mean that you can make any positive changes to your business that you may have been putting off due to a lack of funds, such as replacing broken equipment. However, a rise in demand can cause fulfilment problems, ultimately harming your business reputation.

As your business scales into a larger business from your small business origins, it is important to ensure that you make the necessary changes to set yourself up for success. The following are a few tips for taking action against this sudden change.

Make Sure Your Customers Are Still Number #1

As your business rapidly expands, the first point of assessment is ensuring that your customers are prioritised, particularly if any issues are related to an order or service fulfilment. Gaining a large unexpected surge in demand can overwhelm your employees and stretch any fulfilment timescales.

Therefore it is important to manage your customer expectations through open communication on the likes of your business social media about any issues. Open transparency about demand surges on your social media platforms may be met with a dissatisfied response; however, many more people will understand.

By managing your customer expectations about high demand times through this upfront communication, you can also save your customer service team from dealing with angry or unpleasant enquires.

Digitisation, Outsourcing and Automation

As the volume of demand for your product or service increases, your time will be needed to fulfil each order and the time associated with running the business. However, as your demand increases, this will cut valuable time from all the other areas of your business, let alone your life. For this reason, you should assess your current business processes for any areas or elements that could be digitised, outsourced or automated.

Digitisation within this instance refers to simply switching the likes of printed receipts or package labels into digital versions that would not require printing. Through digital receipts, you can save money on physical printing materials such as paper and ink, alongside cutting the time this process would require.

Outsourcing the likes of your customer service work could be a great way to ease the burden associated with an unexpectedly high volume of enquires. You can do so by utilising call centre outsourcing businesses with the expertise required to perform customer service at a professional level at high volumes.

Some processes that your business may benefit from could be doing something as simple as automating the responses on your social media platforms to customers. There may be several questions and queries that your customers can repeatedly have, which can be automated with programmed responses to inform customers quicker. This will help cut the time needed to fulfil customer service requests by your team.

Assess Your Staffing Needs

Although increasing your cash flow may seem great when comparing your operational costs, particularly staffing, it might be time to hire. It might be tempting to think that your current team may handle the increase in workload; however, having open conversations about expectations and workload demand with your employees will help the company in the long run.

If you are growing too fast and the workload is becoming unmanageable within good enough timescales for your customer base, hiring more people to help is necessary. After all, if your employees are constantly ignored about hiring requests, then you risk losing staff. Nobody wants to be overworked because the business owners are being wrongly conservative about the employee numbers.

Are Your Business Premises Working For You?

Logistically, it might be time to expand your business premises as the workload required to run your business increases. This might be simply due to a space issue for your business processes, particularly if your work requires a manufacturing space such as a studio or warehouse.

Ask your employees about their day-to-day activities as they will provide your clear, hands-on feedback about any potential spacing issues. If your business is service-based, your employees will voice their space concerns if, for example, there are not enough spaces to carry out two private client meetings simultaneously.

Although moving to larger premises may seem like it would cause issues with work fulfilment, remember it is possible to make a move outside your operating hours. Creating a bigger and better space for your business will theoretically allow you to expand your business further while maintaining employee happiness.

Change, Adapt and Re-Plan

Although you may be set in your business ways, with the rapid business growth essentially affirming that your decisions are correct, now is the time to assess your current business model and business plan.

By making these changes, you can make changes related to your working capital and profit margins generated by your business.

From the success that has undoubtedly generated positive profits, it might be time to introduce more products and services to try and replicate your business's current trajectory. Ultimately, the more you plan, the better prepared you will be for your next business stage.