4 Smart Ways to Manage Your Growing Business

A growing business usually implies success. However, without the proper foundation to support the needs of the company, it can soon find itself drowning in work and desperately needing more help. Here are four ways business owners can effectively manage their business’ growing pains.

Use a Virtual Assistant

As a growing business continues to scale, areas of importance like customer service, manufacturing or direct labor will see continued demand. For a small business, a big problem here lies with not having enough people to take on the work. Using virtual assistants (VAs) provide an excellent alternative to hiring interns or on-staff employees. VAs are especially well suited for tasks like back-office work, data-entry tasks, research, lead scoring and responding to customer service requests. There will be some training needed in the beginning, and it’s inevitable that the VA will need guidance to provide solid work. However, once the swing of things is mastered, VAs continue to provide great work at fantastic prices compared to hiring someone full time. Companies can find great VAs from all skill levels for a number of jobs, including mobile developers, graphic designers and content writers.

Use Better Accounting Software

When business is booming, the company focuses its attention on keeping up with the momentum. But chances are, most small business owners don’t see keeping up with its books part of their formula to success. Without understanding how the company is doing financially, small businesses suffer from not knowing their current cash flow, which invoices are outstanding or what inventory looks like. Having online accounting software means these things are taken care of for you — financial reports are shown on the dashboard, reminders are sent for outstanding bills or receivables and inventory is tracked in real time. Regardless of size, every business owner can benefit from having a good accounting system that actively works to provide insights on company performance. Having a routine in managing the company’s financials regularly (at least once a month) and having a good accounting system are invaluable to maintaining a healthy momentum to growth.

Prioritize the Work

Effectively managing growing pains means effectively prioritizing day-to-day tasks. Small businesses have a million things to do in a day, and if the company is a one-man show, it will soon find managing the workload too daunting without an efficient task manager. Business owners should consider using a project management tool to prioritize and assign work, especially when on-boarding VAs. Focus on using a task manager that’s easy to use, easy to manage and most importantly, effective in getting the work done. Everyone in the company should be given an account and held responsible for keeping up with each task assigned. Companies using VAs or planning on using VAs will benefit from access levels, granting specific access to tasks only they need to see.

Store Files in the Cloud

Not only useful to share documents with clients or colleagues, cloud storage and backup services are useful for data security when comparing to saving files only on one computer. Small businesses should keep their files securely stored in the cloud for easy retrieval, convenient sharing and ensuring that files won’t be lost from hard-drive failures.

Growing pains are an inevitable part of a company’s climbing success. The importance of having a stable and secure foundation is paramount for early success. Remember to utilize VAs to free up valuable time for management, keep a routine for managing company financials, use accounting software that’s powerful and budget friendly, prioritize work and delegate efficiently, and store important files securely in the cloud.