Should I Scale or Should I Grow? SAP Concur Solutions Can Help You Do Both

On the surface, the main indicator of success for any business is growth. Everyone wants to see their revenues increase, headcount flourish and new products and services added. But growth always comes at a cost and if the ratio between cost and revenues is off, success might not be all it appears. This is why many organisations look to scale their business rather than simply grow it.

Essentially, growth means adding revenue at the same pace as you add resources, so whilst revenues go up, so do costs. Scaling means boosting revenues, for instance by adding customers and delivering new products and services, without incurring undue costs. Whilst revenue soars, costs don’t, leading to a larger profit margin than growth. 

Organisations in growth mode can, of course, be considered successful, if making a living for the owners and employers is what they want to achieve. However, businesses in scale mode are better positioned to be sustainable long term, make a larger profit and ultimately sell the business at a higher price, if that’s their aim.

SAP Concur solutions can help you drive grow and scale your business, and create new opportunities with scalable flexibility and efficiency, in an integrated spend management solution.

Steps To Grow…

As you grow your business, you’ll likely be increasing headcount, meeting new clients, travelling more and seeking new suppliers. An automated spend management platform will help streamline increased expenses, invoicing and travel bookings as you do so.

According to recent research by Oxford Economics and SAP Concur, during growth efforts finance leaders report spending more time on day-to-day tasks such as expense reporting (53%), cash flow or spending management (53%), travel and expense management (46%) and vendor invoice processing (43%). A spend management platform that streamlines these processes for a faster turnaround will free up time to spend on tasks that grow the business – as well as reducing errors and increasing spend visibility.

Recruiting and retaining top talent is a challenge in itself, made easier by offering employees on-the-go expense processes, with cloud-based mobile apps that take away the pain of manually submitting expenses every month. If your business is expanding into new markets or regions, an automated spend management platform can also help you adhere to regional tax regulations and reclaim appropriate VAT.

…And Scale Your Business

Scaling your business means increasing efficiencies, improving productivity and cutting costs at the same time as expanding your reach and revenues. This is where automated spend management can play a really key role – primarily by managing expense, invoice and travel for tighter spend control.

When scaling a business, adding more headcount isn’t always the best option. Introducing more efficient, automated expense processes that free up your existing employees to focus on tasks that actually help grow the business, can be. Making strategic decisions based on organisation-wide spend data definitely is.

Rather than simply adding resources research shows that 81% of enterprises say they would benefit from focusing more on efficiency and cost control during growth and expansion. Organisations are implementing new technologies to support scaling up their business, with many choosing to adopt analytics (33%), cloud-based solutions (24%) and artificial intelligence and machine learning (23%).

To scale your business, you need to get everyone on the same page when it comes to what’s being spent. This means bringing in spend from all corners of the business to one centralised spend management platform, where finance teams can identify exactly what is being spent, make adjustments to budgets and policies accordingly and direct resources to top priorities. 

With greater spend visibility, finance teams can reduce errors, clamp down on fraud and improve compliance, all of which can put valuable cash back into the bottom line. They can also identify the most cost-effective suppliers and opportunities for volume discounts.

As your business grows to span multiple regions and countries, a centralised dashboard view of spend becomes even more crucial. Likewise, as global tax regulations come into play, you’ll need to create global consistency and compliance across your organisation. 

Should I Scale or Should I Grow?

As mentioned earlier, the decision on whether to scale or grow depends on your long-term goals. If you’re happy to make enough profit to stay in business for now, then growth ticks all the boxes. Bear in mind, however, that there is always the risk that your success could be reliant on your owner staying in the top job, you could be derailed if you lose one key customer, or external disruptions outside of your control – a pandemic, an economic downturn - might destabilise you. 

The best way to minimise these risks is to scale a business that keeps its customers coming back for more and will continue to thrive and deliver a return to its stakeholders long after current management retire.

SAP Concur solutions help IT leaders grow and scale their businesses, by bringing IT and finance together to integrate and automate expense, invoice and travel. You can free users from mundane tasks, enable spending visibility and control, and empower finance to drive growth and become an intelligent enterprise.

Contact an SAP Concur solutions expert to work out how SAP Concur Solutions can help support you in your process to growing or scaling your business.