It’s every entrepreneur’s dream that their startup business takes off and grows by leaps and bounds — leaving you breathless over how fast you became successful (and how much money is in the bank!). But ultra-fast growth is a double-edged sword. Managing a growing business is challenging. Learning to manage a business in half or a quarter of the normal length of time — that’s the stuff that makes you old quickly unless you learn to manage growth without help like IT service management. Before losing your mind, learn these simple steps for managing your super-fast-growing business.

Establish Standards & Best Practices

As you grow, your processes will need to be able to scale upwards quickly and easily. Don’t develop processes that work only in the here and now. Establish standards and protocols that will work when the workload increases by twofold, fivefold, and even tenfold. Unless your business is truly one of a kind (hint: it isn’t), someone else has already invented this wheel. Research industry best practices instead of trying to find your own way of doing standard things. Use IT service management as your IT department so that you can focus wholly on establishing smart standards and best practices to grow with you.

Focus on Employee Training & Education

Your workers are the backbone of your operation. Training assures they’re getting it right, but it also shows how much you value them. Investing in training and employee enrichment works in your favor now and in the future. For now, it assures your workers know what they’re doing. In the future, it assures you hang on to the top talent with the most experience and skills.

Manage Customer Expectations

Would you rather deal with a business that promises you the moon when they can’t even deliver a block of cheese, or, one that promises you peanuts and instead delivers the Milky Way? Your customers are the same way. Keep your promises reasonable and achievable. Then wow them out of their minds by consistently and significantly outperforming their expectations.

Hire as Slowly as Possible

As business pours in, it’s tempting to fill up your employee roster as fast as you can. But there are a couple of problems with this. First, you don’t take the time to vet workers as you should, and you end up with as many lemon makers as you have lemonade makers. Secondly, what happens if the work slows or stops suddenly? A downturn in the economy or a hiccup in the marketplace can stall growth as quickly as it took off. This leaves you in the miserable position of laying off all those workers you just hired, and watching them lose homes and cars and other investments they made in the future you promised them. Hire slowly. Hire smartly.

Outsource Non-Core Activities Via Smart Outsourcing

One day, when your business is a phenomenal success gracing the front of Fortune magazine, you can do everything in house. You’ll have a fully-staffed IT department, your own legal team, an entire accounting department, and even a cleaning staff that isn’t shared with several other local businesses. For now, outsourcing is the way to stay lean and mean. Outsourcing for specialties outside your core business means that you hire only the workers who specialize in your essential operations and deliver immediate and measurable improvements to productivity and success.

Outsourcing all activities that lay outside your core business until the business grows and stabilizes allows you time to focus on growing the business. Other benefits include peace of mind in knowing that processes can be streamlined as each task is handled professionally. When it comes to outsourcing IT service management, you gain 24/7 security from cybercrime, automatic backups that help make your business disaster proof, lower and predictable costs, anywhere-anytime access, and the flexibility and agility you need to ensure growth.

How can you find the IT service management your fast-growing startup desperately needs? Contact us to find out today.