As your business grows, so do your IT needs. IT consultants can help you scale your infrastructure to keep pace with your expanding operations. Whether it's upgrading servers, expanding storage or introducing new software, they can ensure your IT systems can handle growth without missing a beat.
As your business grows, IT consultants ensure that your technology evolves with you, ensuring smooth operations as your digital marketing activities expand. Ultimately, IT consultancy allows you to focus on what you do best - getting results and achieving your marketing goals.
What is scalability?
Originally, scalability was an IT term used to describe the increase in throughput of a system and the associated problems. The basis of the concept has been retained, but its content has changed slightly when it began to be used to describe business models and enterprises.
Scalability defines the ability of a business to grow.
The term implies the potential for growth, i.e. that the idea to be implemented can actually solve a problem for a significant number of users. More importantly, the business is structured in such a way that it can adapt flexibly to changes in demand.
So it is not enough to have a good idea, scalability also requires that the business is able to keep pace with growth and minimise the risk in the event of a sudden drop in traffic. Scalability is the property of a business that enables it to keep up with market changes quickly.
Why is scalability important in a business model? What are its benefits?
Scalability can be achieved if we can build a sufficiently flexible business model.
This is based on minimising fixed costs in our operations.
Of course, all fixed costs remain, but the lower the ratio, the better. However, it is important to note that minimising fixed costs is not necessarily the same as reducing our costs, it is the principle of how costs are incurred. Let's look at some examples for clarity.
If we offer a service, we can do so by selling it from our own platform without spending significant marketing costs to make our site known. If we present the same service on a larger marketing platform where we have to pay a commission on bookings, our overall cost is not reduced, but it varies in direct proportion to the number of bookings we make.Our costs increase when our turnover increases.
As an e-tailer, you have a lot of logistical tasks: you have to store your products, manage orders, pack and keep up-to-date records.All of this is a big job in a warehouse of your own.
An e-tailer has significant logistical tasks: storing products, handling orders, packaging and keeping up-to-date records. All of this is a big job in a warehouse of your own. Outsourcing logistics to a fulfilment partner significantly reduces fixed logistics costs, as most costs are incurred when the fulfilment actually takes place.
There are therefore no unnecessary salaries, unused packaging material or partially empty warehouses with overheads.
The same applies to the technical background of online shops. Having our own server and webshop engine will almost certainly be a barrier to scalability, which we can instead achieve with capacity that can be scaled up according to our needs and with rented webshop engine packages.
A highly specialised business can be economically successful even if it is not scalable, but a startup that wants to serve a wide range of people can only reach the top if it takes scalability into account.If you make custom jewellery that customers can afford, you don't need to be scalable, but if you're selling accessories where the success would be based on getting a lot of people to buy, you do.