Expansion and sustainable expansion should be synonymous, but unfortunately, that is not always as simple to achieve. The primary difference between sustainable growth and growth in general is that the former refers to growth that can be maintained in the long run, while the latter includes both sustainable and unsustainable expansions. A strong business owner knows how to prepare for unexpected expenses.
Even billion-dollar MNCs have previously drowned themselves in debt because they could not differentiate between sustainable and unsustainable growth. Therefore, it goes without saying that unsustainable growth with precise attendance records can lead any establishment to complete bankruptcy. If you are a small business owner who feels like the company needs to cut down on costs and make its core more sustainable for the time being, the following tips from industry veterans should prove helpful.
Save On Rent with a Virtual Mail Address
A virtual mail address is actually a real mailbox address, but it does not require the company to maintain an office at the same address. To better explain the idea, let’s look at the postal mailing address service provided by PhysicalAddress.com. They allow companies to maintain a mailbox address in any location that they need to, without them needing to maintain a real office there. It is a postal mail virtual delivery service, so rest assured that clear, high-quality scans of the company’s mail will still be delivered regularly to your private inbox online.
If you need to close a few offices at a few locations to cut down on expenses, you will still be able to maintain a mailbox with address at each of those locations. This makes a huge difference for online companies in particular, as they don’t necessarily have to shut down all operations and lose all their local customers every time they are forced to close a local office to cut costs. All business expenses related to the closed office help the company’s cost cutting goals, but they will still be able to maintain a physical presence at less than $8 per month through a mail virtual forwarding service.
In fact, the cost-effectiveness of only using a real mailbox address to maintain a physical presence for correspondence in new locations also opens sustainable growth opportunities. If the product/service can be delivered to the client without opening a new office nearby, the potential to sustainably expand with the help of a reliable virtual mail address partner is incredible. The company can become an international business, without needing to spend the kind of money that international business expansions usually require.
Digitize Everything that Can be Digitized
Not every aspect of a business can be or should be digitized. As for everything else, digitization can be both productive and cost-effective. Covid-19 in 2020 taught us a lot of lessons and one of those lessons was the importance of going digital wherever and whenever possible. While countless companies suffered beyond recovery, online-only businesses suffered the least. In fact, it was confirmed that almost the entire eCommerce sector enjoyed huge profit boosts during a time when everyone else was struggling and often failing to even stay afloat.
Automation is the Next Step
Digitization and automation can be simultaneous, but that is not always as simple. For example, your company may have already adopted digitization quite some time ago, but that early adoption does come with a few shortcomings as well.
Does your enterprise management system (EMS) and customer management system (CMS) have the latest automation features? If the software is old, then the answer is most likely going to be in the negative.
There are industry-specific automation features which are designed to help companies cut down on expenses quite extensively. Depending on the sector, business owners looking to adopt intelligent automation can:
- Reduce losses suffered from the human error factor where numbers are involved (bookkeeping, payroll management, accounting, etc.).
- Use robotic process automation (RPA) for significantly boosting productivity while lowering labor expenses.
- Use advanced marketing automation features such as intelligent email/message delivery and personalized ad matching.
- Automate workflow to reduce overtime expenses and increase employee productivity.
- Completely automate repetitive tasks with 100% consistency.
- See one or more possible roadmaps to cut costs and boost profits, including the best possible steps in each direction.
- Detect futile or least effective expenses which can be eliminated immediately or eventually.
- Compare strategies and performance with the competition to find possible ways to improve performance in the future.
As readers may have noticed, most tips suggested here point to going digital or virtual in one way or the other. That is not a coincidence. Businesses across all sectors are trading in the digital age and any company which ignores that fact will find it increasingly difficult to turn a profit. Down the line, digitization is going to become even more commonplace than it is today. Failure to adapt will lead to eventual, commercial failure with or without growth.
