You’ve firmly established your company with a number of clients, launched a successful product or raised a round of financing: next up, planning for scalability. Even though attempting to scale prematurely can be costly, having a roadmap for advancement is an imperative segment of any growing company. This is where developing an IT Strategy is critical.

Here are some important factors in planning for scalability, from large concepts to the less talked about:

Think About More than Technology

When it comes to planning for scalability, many start-ups and small to mid-sized businesses too often concentrate on only their technological components. While those can be incredibly important, there are more staff, less tangible and external assets and aspects that need to be considered. For instance, team structure needs to accommodate for scale, along with HR practices. Marketing needs to be properly automated – only where applicable and best suited – and content, brand collateral and other ad-oriented properties constructed to expand.

There is also an overall mindset to consider, when planning for scalability within your company. While seemingly simplistic, you need to want to scale. It encourages you to do it at a more effective pace (many companies fail or stagnate, by refusing to scale), it incentivizes your employees to create momentum rather than a rut, and aids in progressive goal setting that can help put your sales, development and productions on a more progressive, upwardly mobile path.

Analyze the Past, Plan the Future

With historical data of utmost importance for business intelligence, companies need to have a firm understanding of their data and that of their industry and market, to make informed decisions, when planning for scalability. Discovering past trends in your data will help establish a roadmap for overall decision-making, as well as scaling your company and operations. Effective data-driven forecasting allows successful companies to predict future developments and market opportunities that will greatly impact the methods by which your company scales.

Those misjudgments or missteps you made in early-stage development? Earmark those, to interpret where to improve or strengthen your efforts. Learning from your organization’s mistakes is an underrated quality that can be invaluable during planning for scalability. All of these facets need to be incorporated into the larger brand, in order to inform long-term processes, project management, hiring, product and service schedules and all other parts of the business building to scale.

The Long Game Over the Quick Fix

With many parts of your business, owning your work is an important tenant in advancing. In planning for scalability, this can be significant in your relationship with outsourcing, third-party platforms, partnerships and other assets owned by outside sources. While there are advantages to both solutions that utilize existing software and hardware as well as custom development, many in-market solutions will only aid in scaling so far. Testing the waters when planning for scalability can help in making the right decisions for your company’s future, instead of rushing headfirst into the unknown.

Cultivating credibility outside of and within your organization is another factor in planning for scalability that is often overlooked or undervalued. Strong customer support, innovative programs, effective IT infrastructure and flexibility can help create and sustain positive relationships with clients and stakeholders that become highly marketable, when planning for scalability. Market presence will become a greater factor as you scale so the more abundant your positive outcomes and projects, the better position you will be to scale up your competitive advantage.

No matter your organization’s size, planning for scalability is an eventuality that should be addressed sooner than later. We love problem-solving issues of IT and business growth. Contact us, if your organization is ready to scale. For more business and IT insights, please connect with us on LinkedIn.