How to scale your business – checklist

Stage 1: Understand your offering

• What is your offering?
  Is there a real need for your product or service? Who will buy it and why? Does the market want it?

• How does your offering fit into the competitive landscape?
  If someone else is already creating your product or service, is your offering better than theirs? What is your competitive advantage? If you have first-mover advantage, is your product future-proofed against other products?

• Is your offering scalable?
  What’s the overall market size? Is there an opportunity to continue innovating or to expand overseas?

Stage 2: Get your house in order

• Do you have a good financial management system?
  Is your record-keeping rigorous? Have you moved beyond accounting on a spreadsheet?

• Do you understand your working capital?
  Do you know how to avoid mismanaging working capital? Do you have plans for short-term and long-term financing? Do you have a plan for new projects that working capital wouldn’t cover?

• How are you monitoring progress?
  Do you have key performance indicators you keep under review?

Stage 3: Refine your strategy

• What is your strategy?
  What’s the ultimate vision? Have you involved the wider team beyond the board in formulating your strategy? Is everyone in the business working towards the same goals?

• Do you have the right people to deploy your strategy?
  Do you have the right team in place? If not, what skills do you need in any new employees you hire?

• Do you have the right financial capital to execute your strategy?
  Where is your funding coming from? Do you understand your short-term and long-term funding requirements, and how different funders may play a role?

Stage 4: Understand the aspects of scaling your business

• Do you understand your business’ strengths and areas of development?
  ELITE’S Growth Compass identifies 10 key dimensions of growth: people, operations and processes, innovation, financial management and access to finance, digitalisation, growth strategy, risk management, market orientation, corporate governance, internationalisation. Have you logged in to ELITE to assess your strengths and development areas?

• Do you have a plan to improve on your development areas?
  Have you come up with a concrete action plan for 12 months, three years and five years down the line? What are the most important areas to focus on? Have you prioritised those key areas of development by time?

Stage 5: Seek help and advice

• Have you spoken to businesses like yours?
  Whether through an organised programme like ELITE, or by talking to other businesses at networking events, sharing challenges and ideas with like-minded entrepreneurs can help you grow.

• Have you learned from respected businesses or sector leaders?
  Do you have a mentor you can run problems by? Do you attend talks by industry leaders? Are you part of a professional network?

INVOLVE YOUR TEAM IN CREATING YOUR STRATEGY