Top Five Obstacles Companies Face – And How to Overcome Them: Tips for Small Businesses and Midsize Companies

To realize a competitive advantage, small-business leaders must address five common obstacles: inefficient operations, inability to support rapid growth or new markets, disjointed business processes, lack of visibility into daily operations, and limited resources. Overcoming each of these challenges gives you the power to generate valuable insights into your business, operate more efficiently, and gain the flexibility to maximize your competitive advantage

Obstacle 1: Inefficient Operations

Many small and midsize firms experience periods of rapid growth – and growth always brings some level of inefficiency. Business activity heats up when you enter new markets, find new strategic partners or suppliers, and hire staff. The last things on your mind at these times are manual processes, duplicate data entry, and daily workarounds.

But these are inefficiencies you can’t afford. In an annual survey, research firm Saugatuck Technology Inc. found that 72% of finance executives listed “reducing process inefficiencies” as an important contributor to their organizational success. However, only 42% classified their existing systems to be “very effective” or “extremely effective” in doing so.

Innovative technology can help you streamline operations and better control costs by automating support for core business processes. For example, software can help you automate sales order processing for timely, accurate fulfillment. Real-time account posting cuts your month-end close from weeks to days. And if you can capture all critical information in a single system, you eliminate data reentry – reducing both errors and costs. Finally, automated alerts and workflows make it easy to monitor and control your business, systematically cutting costs and increasing operational efficiency across the board.

Obstacle 2: Inability to Support

Rapid Growth or New Markets Changes in the marketplace, competitive moves, and customer expectations create new opportunities for growth. Quick response to emerging trends is more important than ever. Whether you’re focused on rapid expansion, new market entry, the addition of new product lines, or all three, you need to keep operations flexible and scalable – maintaining operational excellence while meeting your goals for growth.

You need scalable, extendable software systems designed to adapt easily to rapidly changing business needs – with the breadth and depth of functionality small businesses and midsize companies value. You should be able to start small, adding solutions and functionalities as your business grows or challenges arise. Are you entering a new geographic region? Are you bringing on a supplier closer to your plant to tighten the supply chain? You need a global-ready solution, easily adapted to local languages, currencies, and regulatory practices in countries worldwide.

Obstacle 3: Disjointed Business Processes

A company that grows through mergers and acquisitions can end up with disjointed, Un integrated processes. You may have custom applications running in one part of your firm, while you are still using spreadsheets to capture critical business data in another. You may need to connect with a large customer’s or supplier’s system. Yet disjointed processes can hinder your ability to perform even the simplest task, such as consistently fulfilling customer orders accurately.

You need solutions that help integrate workflows and effectively coordinate processes, functions, regions, and teams – from finance to operations.

Imagine if your salespeople could view plant production schedules and quote customers real-time promise dates – differentiating you from the competition’s standard delivery period. An integrated technology framework can make it easy and affordable to connect your entire business network, from headquarters to branch offices, subsidiaries, partners, and more – speeding policy and coordinating operational change throughout the network.

Obstacle 4: Lack of Visibility into Daily Operations

Visibility is the power to see into any given business situation. Increasing visibility requires a combination of experience and analytics to enable better decision making. But it can be hard for small businesses and midsize companies to find the time to analyze all aspects of operations – from customer buying patterns to production numbers to cash flow fluctuation drivers. However, without visibility, it is nearly impossible for a company to react quickly to changes in the marketplace, let alone outmaneuver the competition. As IDC research found, organizations with higher levels of business intelligence (BI) expertise tend to be more competitive in their industries.1

You need a software solution that makes it easy to gather and synthesize internal and external data so that you can make confident, rapid, and fact based decisions about daily operations and long-term strategies. The right analysis tools make it intuitive to uncover business opportunities, identify trends, and anticipate problems. Employees can quickly respond to customer needs, while managers can track revenues, costs, and profit margins in real time.

Whether you’re optimizing capital allocations or working to reduce personnel costs, the right tools can help improve transparency and extend accountability across the organization. Role-based navigation, personalized dashboards, prebuilt reports, and embedded analytics help you generate valuable insights.

A manager investigating why a sales order lacks an invoice, for example, can review the full audit trail – from initial order to outbound delivery – and identify the root cause.

Obstacle 5: Limited Resources

You have limited resources in terms of both human resources and investment capital. And you have many initiatives and projects deserving of investment.

You want to operate efficiently so that your employees spend less time on transaction processes and more time on strategic activities. As noted in a recent many small and midsize firms “use technology rather than more staff to get the job done.” It’s possible to improve productivity, minimize budget impact, and avoid resource drains with a technology solution that’s both affordable and intuitive to implement.

For example, you want to improve your business processes and evaluate a range of deployment options – including on premise, on demand, on device, and hosted – to find the one that best fits your organizational objectives, budget, and timeline. From licensing agreements to monthly subscription plans, technology solutions can be an affordable option for small businesses and midsize companies.