There was a time when a business was limited by issues such as its geographic location or the amount of customers available in its market. However, these concepts are no longer relevant today, creating a new term in the business world: scalable business.

You may have heard about it, especially when it comes to startups. Incidentally, being scalable is a key feature of this type of business. Therefore, it is quite common that many entrepreneurs believe that only these companies can be scalable. But is that true?

It was to help you better understand this topic that we have prepared this material. So, read on and learn about how scalability can bring new insights so that your enterprise stays competitive in the marketplace!

The end of borders and major obstacles

One of the characteristics – and qualities – of scalability is the ability to sell to new places, in many cases, far from the company’s headquarters. This does not mean, however, that every e-commerce is an example of scalable business, as not everyone can grow rapidly, reaching a new scale.

Uber, for example, is a scalable company. The system developed by it, as well as its operating model, has been rapidly reaching new markets, without having to radically personalize its service to each of them. Thus, even if the business grows rapidly, serving many more people, it will need basically the same volume of staff and structure.

More business value

For a business to become scalable, it must also have modern, agile and secure processes. Therefore, the company must be adapted to the needs of these times, in which technology, through Big Data, dictates the new market trends.

All this care with work processes makes the business more valuable. After all, it will have an infrastructure capable of withstanding potential market turbulence and generate innovative results, contributing to its becoming a safer investment.

Smaller investments

Escalating a company cannot be a costly process – in fact, this goes against the idea of scalability. That is why it is common for digital enterprises to be developed, from its beginning, aiming at gaining scale, given that they often have low costs.

In addition to digital enterprises, franchises are another example of scalable business. To do it, however, the franchisor needs to develop a company in which the processes are simple to execute and highly repeatable.

Scalability in direct sales

We also find examples of successful scalability among major brands, such as Avon – even if it is a pre-internet company.

In this case, we have a cosmetics company that could have its growth impeded by the difficulty in creating points of sale. However, working with resellers, whose earnings are commission-only, was a way to gain scale, streamline the sales process, and promote the brand – all in a simple way!

As we have seen, having a scalable business is a great competitive advantage for any company. However, not every enterprise can be scalable. It needs to have simple internal processes, with low costs and the possibility of replication at scale.

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