What is scale
Scaling refers to the capacity to expand operations without the need for extra resources. In the business scale context, it pertains to a company’s ability to incorporate more products, services, or users without significant alterations or increased expenses.
Business scalability enables the smooth management of any situation that might result in heightened activity, such as seizing a go-to-market opportunity.
For a business to scale, scaling should happen in various domains, both in business processes and technology. This post will presently delve into the business facet of scalability for operations using the Salesforce Sales Cloud, reserving the topic of technological scalability for a subsequent discussion.
This blog targets executives in search of strategies to consistently advance their businesses using the Salesforce Sales Cloud while maintaining manageable operations and minimizing costs.
Scaling has challenges
At any organization, there can be multiple challenges that prevent business scaling.
Adoption
Employee’s or customer’s lack of adoption of a product, feature, or business process can be a bottleneck in scaling. Lack of adoption leads to errors, data quality problems, and delays in task execution.
Productivity
Getting tasks done on time and with ease is productivity. Productivity is a significant factor in scale as slow execution of tasks can lead to leaving more opportunities on the table.
Unoptimized business process
Business processes can be complex with multiple stages and people. Let’s use an example, A sales account executive seeking manager and VP approval for a large discount on a quote would wait much longer if the approval process is done serially, unlike a parallel approval process.
Operational Inefficiency
There can be various types of inefficiencies in operations. One we have seen is frequent data changes and delays as a result repeated executions of a business workflows like workflows and triggers. One reason is multiple integrations updating same business data, causing execution of business processes behind the scenes and constant data updates for no real value.
Scaling is achievable
Remember scaling is different, we don’t want to spend too much money or add capacity. So then how do we scale?
Good User Experience
Experience is the feeling we get when we use a product or service, designed for great experiences for employees and customers. For example, using Salesforce Lightning pages, good usability and people-friendly design will go a long way in boosting sales executive productivity and adoption of the sales process.
Business Capabilities
Using the right capabilities makes a business process more efficient. For example, all customer accounts of a small business can be maintained in a spreadsheet and updated. However, storing and retrieving them using Sales Cloud account management is far more easier and efficient. That’s the capability difference.
Optimizations
Efficiency is achievable. Opportunities for efficiency such as reducing the number of approvals or sales stages in a business process. Optimizing code for faster data retrieval is efficient. Reducing the number of business workflows to prevent recursive data updates.
Application Performance
Applications are everywhere. Whether it’s a cloud application or on-premise application performance is critical as they are the foundation for business processes. Prevent application performance degradations with measurements and tests. Make technology perform to scale your business.
Business Scale Has Benefits
Apart from business growth with no major investment, business scalability has many other benefits. It can reduce operational costs as well as save time. The ability to maximize the use of business processes and technology is a good ROI. Not having to constantly fix problems whenever a go-to-market opportunity arises is a cost and time saver. Last but not least, scalability has the side effect of the well-being of employees and customers as better user experience is a criterion for scale.
Conclusion
Every business that wants to grow should be thinking about scalability. Start planning for scalability, once it’s in place it can lead to long-lasting tangible benefits such as business growth, and intangible benefits such as productivity and experience.