“Scaling up” your business isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a necessary step to growing your online company. Regardless if you’re a long-term entrepreneur or CEO of an e-commerce startup, globally scaling your business increases demand, and in turn, increases revenue without incurring additional expenses.
Google is a well-known online company that’s successfully scaled its business. It’s found a way to consistently attract customers organically and is therefore always growing. And while there’s no denying Google is run by experienced business leaders, technology plays a crucial role in the company’s success.
Integrating the right technology can make or break your online company’s success. However, it’s not always easy to know what type of technology to use, and how to incorporate it into your business model.
In this article, we discuss the importance of technology when globally scaling your business:
What’s the Difference Between Growth and Scale?
There’s a common misconception that “scale” and “growth” are the same, but there’s a key difference between the two. Growing a business from top to bottom takes time, and typically a great deal of money and resources. Scaling a business, on the other hand, is increasing revenue without spending additional money or using additional resources. Do you see the difference?
The first step to scaling a business is making sure you’re in a good position to do so. Here are a few signs you’re ready:
1. You’re Going Over & Beyond
You’re continuously surpassing your goals, and that might mean they’re too attainable. While meeting expectations is great, continuously doing so won’t help your company thrive. Sure, you won’t lose money, but you won’t significantly increase your revenue either. If you’re always comfortably meeting your goals, it’s time to scale your business.
2. You’re Turning Down Business
For a business to succeed, it needs loyal clients. But building those relationships is only one part of the equation. You also need to continuously attract new clients, while still maintaining those older relationships. If you can’t do both, your company won’t move forward. Are you turning down business because you don’t have the bandwidth to onboard and maintain? It’s time to start scaling your business.
3. Reliable Infrastructure
You need more than a good product to scale your business – you also need strong infrastructure. Your business model needs to be well aligned with your goals, and you need proper staffing to handle the upcoming demand. If you have that support and confidence, go ahead and start scaling.
How Technology Can Scale your Business
To successfully scale your businesses you need to be able to handle more demand (and a larger workload) without losing revenue or negatively impacting performance. To do that, you need the right tools. Here are a few ways technology can assist you along the way:
Promote Customer Relationships
Scaling your business won’t do you any good if your customer service goes downhill. Let’s face it, customers don’t like to be kept waiting. They want their questions to be answered quickly and effectively. If that doesn’t happen, you could potentially lose that customer and gain a bad track record. To ensure that doesn’t happen, you need technology that can help you maintain those relationships.
Chatbots are a type of software application used to conduct online chat conversations via text. Companies integrate chatbots to provide customers with timely responses, whether that’s by answering their questions or helping them resolve an issue. Chatbots can also help consumers navigate your website, so they can find what they’re searching for.
Integrating technology to help with customer relationships doesn’t just benefit the customer – it also benefits your team. Instead of having to spend time answering emails and phone calls, they can focus more on big-picture projects.
Enhance Communication
As a company starts to scale, it can become challenging to maintain effective communication internally. Chances are, you’re going to start adding new team members and may even shift positions globally. It can be easy for information to get lost with all of these changes. Luckily, integrating the right technology can help streamline that process.
Be sure to integrate a communication platform, whether that’s an app for instant messaging or video calling. There are several communication platforms available today that can work for your company. For example, Slack, Zoom, and Google Hangouts. It’s also worth mentioning that many of this software is free, and can be upgraded at a cost.
The type of communication you need depends a great deal on the size of your company, and how your team prefers to communicate. Make sure you do your research before implementing anything and don’t be afraid to change your mind.
Integrate the Right Technology
Technology plays an important role in every business, especially online businesses. Not only can technology help you attract customers, but also retain them. For instance, integrating the right technology can help you create a seamless payment experience for your customers regardless of where they’re located.
Praxis Tech, a payment management platform, offers a vast network of global payment provider methods to help companies as they scale their business, some of which include bank-to-bank transfers, prepaid vouchers, etc. Having this kind of solution is a game-changer, especially for businesses that scale their companies globally.
Remember, not every consumer is the same. Integrating Praxis Tech means you’ll have a tool that can routinely examine each PSP and use smart routing to direct traffic to the relevant gateway to increase approval rating and profitability. This technology also comes with risk and fraud management solutions, real-time analytics, and access to a vast network of payment service providers (PSPs).
One benefit of having multiple PSPs is they act as safeguards. Let’s say one PSP stops working and can’t process payments. Having a network of PSPs ensures your business can move forward in the event of an emergency.
It also makes it easier for your business to grow globally. Since Praxis Tech comes with pre-integration and a single dashboard to control global payments, you won’t have to manage anything yourself.
To learn more about Praxis Tech, visit the website to book a demo today.