How To Make The Transition From a Small Team To a Large Organization

How To Make The Transition From a Small Team To a Large Organization

It is the dream of every small company to become big. Just as a child dreams of becoming big and strong like his dad, it is a natural move for small companies to expand and grow till they achieve their goal. But for a child, growing is a natural process; his parents give him sufficient nutrition to make his physical self grow, but for a startup to grow big and huge, you really have to do a lot of hard work.

Suppose you are a company selling software products, and want to expand to hardware and then to implementation and other services eventually, then the road will not be easy. But many companies have done this, and successfully too. Here are some perfect examples of small team companies that really made it big – Mc Donalds started as a small restaurant and now it has chains all over the world; Hewlett Packard was started by two men who worked in a garage; Hershey started with a single chocolate shop and went bankrupt, not once, but twice, before the tables turned and he began to attract success.

Not everyone can realize their dream of becoming big. Why is it so?

Access to market

The basic requirement for any startup company is access to market. If your access is limited, your growth will be inhibited. By market access, here we mean global access. You can achieve growth only if you reach global heights. Local and national markets actually inhibit your growth because you are not going any farther and as they say, “sky is the limit”.

Innovation

Innovation is the key to growth. You cannot remain stagnant selling the same products and the same ideas if you want to achieve global heights. So innovation must be your business mantra.

Finance and capital

If you want to grow, you need to have cash; many companies falter and fall if they don’t have money to grow. You might have to let go of some equity to get hold of cash, but it is worth the effort taken.

The leadership should have mettle

The success of a company lies in the efforts of the leader that runs it. If you have a good team leader and executives then you can expect the company goals to be achieved. You can also begin the process of growth by hiring a strong group of people who would eventually become the leaders that rein in success on a global level. These are the real people who would grow your company.

Here is how you can make the transition from small to big:

Starting the right partnership

When you are small, you need the helping hand of big brother to face the big, bad world. Similarly, you can partner your company with a giant/bigger company. For example, Unidesk partnered with Dell before it grew from being a mere virtual desktop management provider. Though Dell was earning $10 for every $1 revenue that it was earning, Unidesk received a far greater global exposure than it deemed possible. When you function as a small company, you may not be able to provide total solutions to your customers, but when you partner with the right company, you can be a total solutions provider. Some small companies complain that they cannot have the same vendor relations that big companies have with the vendors, but you get to start somewhere.

Market segmentation

It is not possible to target all the people in the world. Create a segment and target them. Look at Pepsi, they couldn’t compete with Coke, because it was already well established. But then later, they created their own niche market. So instead of waging a losing game with a big giant, you create a segment and concentrate on increasing your reach there. Choose your demographic and focus your market activities in that area. You are bound to see success there.

How you can be different?

You not only have to feel and act different, you have to be different in what you sell and how you market. Look at Compaq, they are credited to be the first company that sold the first personal portable PCs. They tried to be different, tapped a market that had great potential and became successful. If you have the capital, you can partner with smaller companies in your endeavor to grow. Slowly and slowly, you become a total service provider.

Can you become a leader in your niche market?

Big businesses often become big because they became leaders in what they did. Similarly, you can concentrate on a strong selling aspect and become a leader there. Or perhaps, you can enter a market in another country and exploit the potential there. This is exactly like the story of two sales people of two prominent shoe companies when they visited an African country. The salesmen visited the country and saw that people were barefoot. One salesman returned and reported to the company that all the people were barefoot and hence wouldn’t require shoes. The second person made a call and reported that since all the people were barefoot, the company has a great potential there. Which company do you think would be most successful in their business? The second company, of course. This was a bold move, but one that became instantly successful. This company just discovered a huge opportunity for growth and used it to their advantage.

On final thoughts

So as you see, it is not easy, and not every company can make it big, but if you have faith and trust in yourself, combine them with the tips mentioned above, you can definitely expand.

Interesting links about the topic:
Best Ways to Grow Your Business
Strategies That Can Make Small Business To Big
How To Make Small Companies Big?

Pictures: Flicker.com / belpo/ Yahoo

The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at www.Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.