Home topics finance finance-cash-flow Cashflow Cashflow Gear Up for Growth Guest Author October 6, 2005 Many small business owners are surprised by success beyond their expectations, and are often not equipped to handle or sustain rapid growth. Joanne Pimlott takes us through the key issues to consider from start-up to growth. Starting a business is a complex, difficult, and exciting process. Remaining in business is a different and equally challenging thing. If we had to give labels to the key processes or tasks associated with business growth and success, what would they be? Growth is also change, so the issue is also one of understanding how to manage that change and development process. We can look at business growth from several perspectives, particularly: strategic, organisational, and financial. The Big Three Strategic growth: small businesses risk not growing or not managing the growth properly through failing to value and allocate resources to sufficient, timely and appropriate market research. Your business may be growing as a result of offering a competitive advantage in the marketplace. How will this be sustained? Will you, for example, grow through competing on cost or by differentiating yourself? In what way are you best positioned to differentiate yourself from the competition: through the way you engage with your customers; marketing; or through the actual product or service? The best way to arrive at answers to these questions is through effective and timely market research. Organisational growth: managing the growth process means allocating time to planning and working