At first glance, it might seem as though money is the biggest challenge to funding your business for growth.
Funding is one of the main obstacles that keep businesses from scaling. And sure, money is a big part of the problem. Either you don’t have the money or you can’t find people to invest in your business.
But in plenty of cases, money is not the only reason you’re having trouble scaling. The problem is also how you build your business. Here are some of the biggest challenges to funding your business for growth – and how to overcome them.
Are You Losing Time Unnecessarily?
Whether you’re planning to grow your business by yourself or are thinking of finding someone to invest in your growth, one thing is certain. You need to make sure that every aspect of your business is running as smoothly as possible.
In both cases, a smoothly running business is essential. Investors don’t want to put their money in a business that’s struggling to manage itself.
And you won’t be able to scale if you’re constantly fighting for time. There are a lot of different areas where you could be losing time.
Team Communication
How easy is it for your team members to communicate, share documents and files, and find the information they need in previous communications?
Do you have a system set in place for team communication? If not, such an investment is definitely worthwhile.
You don’t want your colleagues and employees to lose time and get frustrated when they can’t find what they need. Get a tool such as Zoho Cliq or Slack to make everyone’s’ life a little easier.
Cloud Computing
Restricted usage can hinder your progress. With cloud computing, everyone in your business can access any tool, software, and so on.
And they can do so from wherever they are, using whatever device they want. Plus, cloud computing can improve your teams’ collaboration. Your employees can work from anywhere, at any time.
Cloud computing is safer for your business, and your computers will be faster. These are just some of the benefits of using cloud computing.
Cloud Storage
Cloud storage (such as Dropbox) helps protect your files and documents so that you don’t lose anything.
Another big benefit is that cloud storage means anyone on your team can access these documents easily, whenever and wherever they are.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation does more than save you a lot of time. It also increases your results and helps you nurture your leads faster and more efficiently.
This is one of those investments in your business that can make a huge difference to your overall success.
And although marketing automation used to be quite expensive, it’s now accessible to businesses of all sizes with tools such as Jumplead and Mailchimp.
Social Media Marketing and Automation
Social media is a great promotional tool for businesses. But if you’re not making full use of tools that can help you manage it and automate some of your tasks, social media will eat up hours of your day.
Get a tool like Agorapulse or Hootsuite to help you manage your accounts, as well as to post and schedule updates to your accounts.
Accounting Software
Accounting software (such as Free Agent, Clearbooks, and Sage Accounting) is another one of those resources that I believe is essential for business growth.
Accounting software helps you save time managing your finances, for one, but it also helps you make better financial decisions.
For example, you can even integrate your accounting software with an automated invoice processing solution and make the invoicing process much faster and efficient.
Using accounting software also makes it much easier to calculate your taxes.
Are You Saving and Maximizing Your Profits?
As I mentioned earlier, lack of funding is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) obstacles keeping businesses from growing. You might have great ideas and amazing plans.
But if you can’t afford investing in your business, can’t find potential investors, or can’t get a loan, all those plans will be virtually unreachable.
Try to keep a close eye on your finances (this is where the accounting software I talked about earlier comes in handy!).
To make sure you’re not haemorrhaging money unnecessarily, ask yourself the following questions.
Do You Really Need to Hire, or Can You Outsource?
Consider outsourcing tasks such as social media management, written and visual content creation, project management, and admin tasks. Doing so can help you save quite a bit of money as opposed to hiring someone full-time.
As a small to medium enterprise (SME), you can’t really afford to hire someone for every task you have. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to bring someone in full-time just to keep up your business blog.
But outsourcing the maintenance of your blog will free your time so that you can focus on more important tasks – the tasks that help bring in more money for your business.
And finally, outsourcing will prevent you from paying for all the extras (such as health insurance) that come with full-time employees.
Where Is the Bulk of Your Money Going?
What are your biggest expenses? Evaluate all of your spending on a month-to-month basis to find out where you’re spending excessively.
Chances are, there might be something that you can do about the amount you’re spending. You might negotiate a better deal or find a competitor that provides a similar service, but at a smaller price, and so on.
Do You Really Need to Pay for That?
Sometimes, you might find yourself paying for resources that you don’t actually need. Monitor your finances regularly, and make a list of all the payments, big and small, that you make on a consistent basis.
Then spend some time going through each one. Unless a payment is essential and unavoidable, ask yourself, is this payment helping me make any money for my business?
Is it saving me a considerable amount of time and helping me focus on other tasks? If the answer is no, then it might be that you can cut that spending and not even notice it’s gone (except, of course, for more money in the bank).
Even if you’re cutting small payments, every little bit counts, and that money could be better used elsewhere.
What Are You Doing with Your Profits?
Sometimes, profits need to be put back into the business, but that’s not always the case.
What’s another way that you can use your profits? Quite simply, save them and grow them.
Try to put your profits aside where possible, and make them work for you by investing some of them.
It’s preferable that you have a mix of different investments with a focus on lower risk investments. These might grow at a slower rate, but there’s a much lower chance you’ll lose your money.
You can even test your investment skills by using a tool such as Swanest to create a test investment portfolio to see how you’d perform:
Funding Your Business: Conclusion
The sooner you start thinking of how to grow and scale your business, the better. Try to automate and streamline all that you can about your business.
Have a firm grasp on your finances to eliminate unnecessary spending, and you’re going to be one step closer to scaling up your business.
Lilach Bullock
Latest posts by Lilach Bullock (see all)
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- The Challenges of Funding Your Business for Growth - January 24, 2018
Dear Lilach your article about business challenges is a gift for the newbies in the business field. They can learn a lot from here. Good work.
Hi Lilach Bullock ,
Thank you for providing us such a detailed information.
Your article is just amazing. Worth reading.
Thank you for the tips and tools that should be used, really usefull especially when you are just starting a business and absolutely have no knowledge in those stuffs.
Excellent post about the Challenges of Funding Your Business for Growth. This tips helps to over come these challenges and helps in Business for Growth.
Hi, Lilach Bullock ,
It’s an awesome article for business. I am reading this content and understood the words. This content is very important for our business. Your content is very useful to benefit a technology company.
Yes, funding money is the biggest hurdle for startups as they don’t know how to use money and where to invest. I marked some key points that are closely relevant to my business. Thank You!
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Hi Lilach!
Your article reminds me of the challenges I’ve faced and luckily overcome during the start-up phase of my business. I always feel as if I never had enough time to finish every single task at hand. I don’t have all the needed resources to hire a number of employees to help me handle business functions such as customer service. After a year of struggling, I thought about making a change. I decided to find an outsourcing team and luckily found a great partner called http://onehalf.com.au/.
Your article will surely be of big help for start-up businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs (the tools you mentioned are really a must-have). Great job!
Thank you for sharing this!
Nice article! Really useful information. It’s really worthwhile. Your explanation is very convincing and I felt very happy while reading the article.
Hi there, thanks so much, really pleased to hear you liked the article and found some useful tips 🙂
Hi Lilach Bullock How are you ?
I read your artificial. It is full of great information. You are working Good..thanks For amazing info.
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I’m great thanks, hope you too 🙂 Thanks for the comment and kind words, pleased you liked the article.
I agree, we live in a time when starting a business online is a real possibility for anyone who wants to try it – it’s important however that you think of your growth from the start. Thanks for your comment 🙂
Hi Jagdish, thanks so much for your comment and kind words 🙂 Pleased you like my blog and hope you keep reading 🙂
Hi Jagdish, thanks so much for your comment and kind words – pleased you like my blog posts 🙂
The article is missing one thing that is appreciate your words and mind. You described wonderful with your skills. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Jina, many thanks for your comment and lovely words, glad you liked the post. Have a great day 🙂
Its really challenging , but you point in the perfect direction for any difficulties we face during this. thanks for sharing. keep up the good work.
regards
Som
Hi Som, thanks so much for your comment, pleased you liked the article 🙂 It really is challenging, but if you prepare ahead, it’s so much easier to grow your business!
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Accept my endless gratitude for the useful post.
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Hi Lilach,
Great article, you shared quite useful info about challenges to funding the business. I must say it is exceptionally very well explained. Thanks for this wonderful post.
Have a good day….
Abid Masih
Hi Abid, thanks so much, pleased you found the post useful 🙂
And a good day to you too!
Hi
Good article, thanks for sharing this.
You have good knowledge about challenges funding businesses for growth.
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Hi Ravi, thanks for leaving a comment, pleased to hear you found the post useful 🙂 It’s not easy scaling a business, so it’s important to get it ready for growth as soon as possible.
Additional funding is definitely necessary for any business to grow and to keep up with the latest trends and innovations. It may be out of the budget but it pays to invest in these necessary changes to make work effective and efficient. Returns are greater in the long run — a business has to evolve.
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Very true, I couldn’t agree more; businesses need to invest in better technology to keep up with all the latest trends and so that they can build a stronger, more efficient business.
Funding is a very important part of your business. As your business grows, your strategy needs to evolve to suit your changed circumstances.
Hi there, many thanks for reading:) Yes, you really need to think of the future as soon as possible, and plan your business growth strategy ahead of time.
Hey Lilach Bullock,
Your article is veru useful for start ups, specially for IT companies.
Thanx for sharing it.
Good One
Always glad to be of help, pleased you found the post useful 🙂 It’s good to plan your business growth as soon as possible to make sure everything is running smoothly and ready for the next step.