Growth is a sign of a healthy business, but scaling can be difficult.

Small to medium sized businesses will often encounter similar hurdles and as a business owner, these can be challenging to overcome. Your ability to foresee future hurdles and overcome them quickly can have a big impact on the success and growth of your business.

At SmartPA, our virtual assistants provide admin and business support services to over 5000 clients globally. This has provided us with a unique insight into many of the common hurdles that businesses will face. Here are 6 of the most common hurdles that our clients face:

1. You can become your own hurdle

When you run your own business, you become your business. This can have a massive impact on your time as you find yourself juggling endless tasks, focusing on client deadlines, payments, invoicing, processing of documents… the list goes on. Time management is crucial for all businesses and making efficient use of your working time is the most important tool you will use. For example, a report by BIBA found that SME leaders dedicate 28% of their time to processing claims. Off-loading your laborious tasks will give you time to focus on the growth of your business.

2. Data can be time-consuming

All businesses, no matter their size will use a Customer Relationship Management system. Setting these systems up can be tedious and time-consuming. One of our clients who is a private doctor came to us in the early stages of opening their new practice after taking over patients from another consultant who had retired. For our client, adding patient details from the old system to the new practice’s management system, setting up invoicing systems and creating a new VIOP system were big tasks early on. This was an early hurdle for our client and one that we were more than happy to support with. Our SmartPAs have a wealth of experience and are experts in data systems. By using SmartPA, our client transferred all data accurately and launched all systems quickly without enduring the lengthy process themselves, giving them time to focus on the success of their new practice.

3. Hiring can be costly

Hiring can be costly – not only financially, but costly on your time also. We support many large businesses in the hospitality industry. A notable hurdle for one of our clients in this industry was the processing of offers for new employees, ordering uniforms and loading new employees onto their HR platform. Our client required only a few hours of support each day and the flexibility in our monthly packages accommodated this. This is a challenge that many businesses will face, especially those experiencing high growth or high turnover. By reducing the number of hours spent on employee integration and letting us handle their back-office support, our client was able to save money and spend more time focusing on finding the right talent for their business.

4. It is easy to overpay

With 5000 clients globally, we have a wide network of businesses that we work with. When one of our clients mentioned that they were renewing their insurance with their existing provider, we knew we could find them a better deal. As a business, you are experts in your field but not experts in liability insurance and it can be easy to overpay. For one of our clients, we managed to source them a new policy that offered better cover, whilst saving them over £400 per year! With a little research and know-how, you could save your business a lot of money.

5. Set up a Customer Relationship Management system sooner rather than later

For small businesses, taking the leap to a project management system can be daunting. However, once you’re up and running with this, you will experience a wealth of benefits including; easier collaboration, better scheduling, better communication with clients, budget management – the list goes on. We recently implemented a new shared project management tool for one of our clients who is a parent coach. This allowed them to streamline their processes and systems and now they can ensure that nothing is missed, and they can see a snapshot of their business with ease. Face the hurdle of integrating with a project management system early on – the longer you leave it, the bigger the challenge will become.

6. Web developers are expensive

Having your own website is crucial when you are launching your business and it can be easy to get caught in the trap of hiring expensive web developers. A common problem for many of our clients are the fees they receive when making changes to the website. To resolve this hurdle for several of our clients, we replicate their website so that we have full control. This way, if our client wants to make changes, we do the work for them for a fraction of the cost that a web developer would charge. Having control over your website is crucial for growth. We are constantly changing and improving our website, which would simply not be possible if we were receiving expensive fees for every change.

We offer a variety of packages to suit your needs, starting from just 30 minutes of usage a day. Our SmartPAs are flexible, exactly how your business needs them to be! Contact us via the form below today.