Top tips to grow your SME on a budget.
Whether you’ve had investment, used personal funds, or strapped for cash (as most SMEs are), growing smart is the best way to set your business up for the long term. Here’s a few tips to help you build your SME without spending tonnes of cash.
Get your business plan right
Understanding your customer.
What you are aiming to do and how do you plan to get to where you want are essential aspects of a business, which surprisingly many organisations miss. When you’re growing quickly and organically, it’s essential to take a step back and conduct research and analysis to ensure the customer is always front and centre of your plans and get it down on paper. With the use of Control Room Finance’s business model design, we can quickly provide you with an efficient and accurate financial model that can feed into your business plan and enable you to look at every eventuality and plan for the future,
Implement processes and technology early on so you can scale easily
Getting the right processes in place early on your journey will help you grow your business seamlessly. It’s easy to start a business as a one-man band where everything is in your head, but this can lead to wasted time and money when you start to grow. Utilise one of Control Room’s interim financial controllers to advise on what processes and pieces of technology can support you early on and you’ll be thanking us later! We’ve helped one business save 60 hours of work and reduce errors from human input by transforming their systems.
Keep focus on your customer
As mentioned in the first point, it can be easy to lose focus on why you are doing what you’re doing. With the help of a business plan, and regular check ins on your progress on your delivery to your customers, you will maintain focus on the thing that matters keeping interest and engagement with your business and long lasting loyal customers. With our future ready finance review, one of our team can provide a swift and thorough audit of your business and provide a report outlining findings and recommendations with the customer and your success at the forefront.
Make time to take a break from work
Setting up a business is tough. Long hours with blood, sweat and tears goes in to making it a success. But taking time for yourself is essential to maintain momentum and prevent burnout. Working with a Control Room Finance interim, part time financial controller can assist in taking away the work you don’t want to do and takes up time, and frees you up to do the work you enjoy, and take time off to reset and enjoy the rest of your life. In the long run, you will grow easier and thrive when you have space in your mind to develop. We can support you with whatever budget you’re working with so get in touch to discuss your requirements.
Build the right team
With an SME, each and every employee is essential and there are a few things you can do to ensure each feels valued and delivers to helps grow your business. If you have nailed the above points, explaining your vision and engaging your employees in clearly defined roles from the beginning will help you hit the ground running. The team doesn’t need to be made up of full time internal members, being smart with your money and hiring means you can bring people in for specific projects or tasks without employing staff permanently. Our remote financial controllers can support you with delivery of your work, and act as part of the team for as little as an hour a week.