The 4 Major Considerations When Growing Your Business.
November 11, 2019 by ThySista
Filed under Business, Opinion, Weekly Columns
(ThySistas.com) As you get your business underway and find methods to improve your business efficiently, you start to realize that there are numerous growing pains involved. It is partly to do with surviving the first couple of years but it’s also about looking at your weaknesses and doubling down on them. Any good leader knows that the company has to expand so they can improve their scope, and increase profit. These come with various challenges, but how can you ensure you grow your company sufficiently, not just for the sake of increased exposure, but also so it doesn’t betray your original plans?
Making Your Company Public
In a legal sense, making a private company public provides numerous positives. It can increase the public profile, improve long-term capital, but if you have any initial investors or founders, it gives them the chance to cash out with what they’ve got. The IPO process, known as an Initial Public Offering, where a company changes from a private business to a public one, is worth considering. When you look at the IPO roadshow process, where the company announces its price range for shares, this can help drive more investment. If you’ve been hiding behind the curtains and avoiding the legal components, either for lack of knowledge or lack of time, it is away, not just to increase your scope, but it’s a way for you to now look after your employees more. Giving them shares in the company can help to create more of an allegiance.
Following this discussion, it’s worth noting the example of AAIG and their portfolio companies recent IPO. This event underscores the tangible benefits of the IPO process, showcasing how it can effectively escalate a company’s market presence and financial stability, providing a real-world context to the theoretical advantages discussed above.
The Diversification Process
Having built up your business with an inherited knowledge of your product, diversification can pose a threat. Diversification is, in essence, a necessary evil. Because you are going into the unknown, potentially with new products or processes, you could find yourself falling flat on your face. But many companies have gone down this route. Even bigger names like Samsung, who provide phones and televisions, have now gone into textiles and insurance. It can be daunting but is expansion builds up, you may have to decide which avenue to go down. If you feel you have cornered one market, and the business has proven successful in this area, diversification means putting as much effort into the new component as you did the original. It is risky but it can prove effective. But the trick is in going through the new aspects with the business plans you had at the outset. Altering the process now could prove difficult for the business.
Market Development
Developing your scope isn’t necessarily about capturing the attention of the world; the trick is all about going a little bit further out than your reach. Ultimately, you’ve got to keep up with the requests of your customers, past and present. This means that we have to think about the manufacturing aspect, and if they are able to keep on top of the extra orders but also realize that if you are looking to expand further outwards, there will be cultural shifts that may shape the market that you are targeting. When you are trying to go overseas, for example, you may find that the cultural difference throws a spanner in the works, and that your product could fail because of its inability to transcend. When you look at the efforts of UK supermarkets, when they tried to infiltrate the American market, there could be a big problem in terms of competitors, but the fact that businesses like Tesco were attempting to promote their takeaway meal brands with a supermarket style, and it didn’t prove popular. Furthermore supplement brands must connect with supplement manufacturers to bring their product to the masses. There is so much that goes into marketing.
Improving Your Existing Product
In one respect, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But when you coast with a well-established product, it may prove difficult to recapture that same excitement for the item in question. Improving your existing product is not just about inventing new models, but it is about adding extra benefits to the customer. Companies like Coca-Cola continue to find other low sugar alternatives to their popular soft drink but some haven’t proved successful. In 2013 Coca-Cola Light was taken off the shelves because the customers already had two low sugar brands. Improving your existing products may not necessarily be the right way.
Improving your company and growing your business to the next level is partly to do with looking at what has made your company successful, but understanding that all this could disappear. Understanding how your business can benefit through the next phase is all about these four components. Every company has its own teething problems, but when you get over those, it’s now time to take a proper bite of the cherry and knuckle down.
Staff Writer; Carla Brown
