Every business is established to earn revenue and eventually grow. However, growth can sometimes be a problem in business, especially when it occurs too quickly. Below are the signs that your business isn’t ready for such growth.

Your business can’t keep pace

If your company is having trouble keeping up with the incoming business, it may be a symptom that your business is growing too fast. For instance, you can’t produce enough to meet the immense bulk of orders, perhaps maybe your software has become inadequate to deal with the volume. This may signify that there’s a bottleneck in your process and you’re going to have to invest in clearing it.

Employees are overworked

If your business is inundated with demand, your employees – particularly your front liners – bear the impact. To keep up with the requisitions, they stay late and would probably average working almost 80 hours a week. The main problem with having overworked personnel is that their productivity decreases, their absenteeism builds and employee turnover rises.

But it’s not just a matter of your company’s bottom line that’s affected: resignations mean more work for you and your other employees. You have to hire and train replacements; but even then, you might still have difficulty meeting the demand since many are newcomers, and this could hurt your business.

The company has a cash flow problem

Even with a credit line, you might still encounter cash flow problems if your business grows too fast because your increasing expenses are larger than the money coming in. Costs may be going up due to stronger demand or perhaps you’re just expanding. Either way, your cash flow isn’t enough and this could force you to get into debt to sustain the company.

 If this happens, you need to get a larger credit limit (or a credit line) and request your suppliers to let you pay at a later date. In the meantime, use your credit cards for handling your expenses.

Customers are increasingly unhappy

Complaints from customers are normal. If your business is able to keep up with the growth, your help desk would be robust enough to deal with all the complaints. However, if your company is growing too fast, it wouldn’t be effective in addressing grievances. Your phone lines would be busy and customers are put on hold for long periods of time. Since your troops are overworked, they might not be very efficient either. The result: customers would be increasingly unhappy.

Suppliers can’t meet the demand

You’re not the only one who would be overwhelmed. As you try to keep pace with the volume, your demand for materials increase and your suppliers won’t be able to keep up with you either. Your best course of action is to look for more suppliers to meet the demand. You can also just spend more to get additional materials, but you’ll have to fix your cash flow problem first.

You and your staff are unclear about your roles

Another symptom of rapid growth is that you and your employees are forced to handle tasks that are beyond your expertise. Because of this, employees’roles would become unclear. While it’s good that you’re covering each other’s backs, this will cause difficulty because everyone probably is not qualified to handle these tasks. It also muddles your team structure and confuses your employees about their role.

Important

The suggestions in this article do not constitute professional advice.

If you wish to know more about how to handle your company’s growth, we at WM Accounting Group can help.You can get in touch us at 08 7120 2384 or support@wmbta.com.au.