4 Ways to Grow your Business Without Capital Expenditure
So you made it through the setup phase of your business; that crazy, scary start-up period when you had to make sales even though your processes weren’t completely defined. You had to find clients without a marketing strategy in place, and you had to fork out a lot of money before you were generating income. And now that’s behind you, you are ready to grow! But how can you grow your business without capital expenditure?
Yempo has been in this exact position, and we used the strategies we are sharing below to move from our slow and steady start-up phase to support our 168% growth in our second year of operation.
4 Ways to Grow your Business
1. Rent, don’t buy
Look for subscription or rental options for software licenses, cloud based storage and even technology infrastructure. Move as much as you can from capital expenditure to operational expenditure to minimize large cash outlays. In my business we use only Cloud based applications on a monthly subscription basis. It allows us to easily expand and contract to suit our needs and we don’t carry the support overhead of custom built applications. As cashflow allows and we have surety of our requirements, we also switch to annual subscriptions to benefit from discounts.
2. Turn to technology
Look for standard software packages or automation to streamline your business and avoid hiring staff to perform tasks manually. Automate your payroll, automate your social media posts, automate your financial reporting. Yempo is moving to a fully automated time-keeping system that integrates with our payroll. This will eliminate a host of tedious manual tasks and enable our staff to focus on higher value activities.
3. Outcome Based Outsourcing (OBO)
You possibly already have someone who keeps your finances in order, filing tax returns and quarterly statements. You don’t need a full time person for this, you just want someone to deliver to an agreed outcome at a fixed price.
You can do this with your Social Media Marketing or for a web site build, using a professional Digital Media company like the one we use – Social Media Solutions. We also had our original logos designed by a graphic designer on www.freelancer.com, and we use the responsive IT Services company I Know IT to manage our technology.
Outcome Based Outsourcing allows you to focus on your core business and your strengths. Your marketing business doesn’t need to build an IT team to support itself; there are firms that can help you with their specialised skills and lower costs. Your IT business doesn’t need to build a team of accountants to manage its finances.
In each scenario, OBO is very effective once you agree with the service provider on what outcome you want delivered, a timeframe for delivery and a price for the service.
4. Managed Service Outsourcing (MSO)
If you need to grow quickly in terms of actual headcount, a Managed Service outsourcing firm such as Yempo can help. Adding staff can require a significant outlay of cash; technology, furniture, real estate, administrative overhead and management, not to mention recruitment and payroll. The managed service that Yempo offers allows you to outsource an entire function, be that one person or 10 or 100. The only cost you incur is in your time to interview the candidate and make a selection. Then we bill you monthly in your currency based on a simple, low cost and transparent cost model.
Yempo provides accommodation for “Your Employees Offshore” in a professional air-conditioned office environment with Western management to oversee them. We provide a new PC or laptop to your specification and take care of all the payroll, performance management and other employee compliance matters. Once hired, they function as your own employee except with no capital outlay. Simple!
You can exit the arrangement with Yempo on 30 days’ notice, and we have a unique set of benefits and offerings for our employees to keep them happy and engaged.
We have case studies of clients that have needed to grow but didn’t want to outlay capital to do so. Ask us how we can move your business into a rapid growth phase!
About the Author: Michelle Fiegehen is the CEO of Yempo, a boutique offshoring company in three locations in the Philippines. She has lived and worked in the Philippines and India since 2009, building offshore capability for clients in Australia, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong.
