Is your multi-Unit business set up to scale? You’re currently operating somewhere between 25-50 locations. You’re past the start-up phase and your multi-unit business is making a profit. However, there are still goals you’d like to achieve. More locations mean more profit to invest into your mission, vision, and values, more job opportunities, and more growth opportunities for current employees. You want to help your company continue to grow.

You’re ready for the next step. Ready to open another 50 locations. Ready to leave the early growth stage and enter mid-life growth.

You’re ready, but how do you know your business is ready to scale?

You Have A Solid Organizational Structure

Growing companies often experience growing pains. Your existing systems and processes can’t handle the added work or increase in customer volume. Your people and resources are overwhelmed. A business that is set up to scale has the organizational structure in place to offset the growing demand. Without the right infrastructure, you could run into issues like lack of inventory, or decreased quality of your products or service.

The challenge most companies face is the inability to consolidate and rebuild their systems gradually. It could take months to hire and train an employee to handle your accounting or payroll systems while also trying to hire and train employees in your stores. Gradual restructuring isn’t always an option. If you’re facing consolidation mode, you’ll have to make a decision. Either take the time to focus on rebuilding the systems in-house, or hire experts, like a BPO provider, to help boost your infrastructure so you and your team can continue to focus on growth.

If you have your operational systems and administrative processes streamlined and efficient, then you’re ready to begin strategically planning to scale.

You Have the Right Team

When you pass the start-up phase and enter the early growth stage, you learn to delegate some of the day-to-day tasks to a trusted expert, so that you can focus on your priorities as a business leader. Companies that are set up to scale have the right core team in place. You’ll need a long-term management team to operate your locations, lead the company culture, and drive the business in a positive direction. If you’ve chosen to outsource certain business processes, you’ll need the right outsourcing team who knows your business, understands your needs, and has invested in your success.  Team development is essential to a growing business. If you’re a business leader who can’t delegate to trusted team members, or hasn’t taken the time to develop a strong core team, you’re only setting yourself up to fail. Successful multi-unit companies have the right people in the right places.

You Have A Strong Cash Flow

Making a profit is a good sign of a healthy business. Growth begins when you can see a strong cash flow and repeatable sales. Look for signs of a healthy consumer base, repeatable sales, and assess your risks. Weigh your worst-case vs best-case scenario, and analyze future profits, revenue, costs, and stability based on your business model.  If you have a clear understanding of your business performance and are able to forecast for one, two, or 12 months of sales, you can determine if it’s time to scale.

Still Unsure if Your Multi-unit Business is Ready to Scale?

The decision to grow is important. It could mean the success or failure of your business. For multi-unit companies looking to expand, the best strategy is to partner with industry experts who can help guide you through the process.

Many mid-size companies turn to Business Process Outsourcing to help boost their infrastructure, improve cash flow, manage KPIs, save on their bottom line, and realize other benefits BPO companies provide.

At InfoSync, we’ve helped over 180 companies with 10,000 locations across 90 brands scale their business with success. If you’re ready to take the next step and scale your business, reach out to our experts today. It just takes one discussion to determine if InfoSync is a good fit for you and your team.