Expanding a small business to multiple locations is very exciting. It’s cause for celebration and a sign of real success that you’re able to grow into a new location. Of course the decision to add a location begins with a massive amount of market research, financial preparation, assessment of operational needs, and a marketing strategy.
Managing a small business with multiple locations can also be complex, but becomes easier with the right strategies in place. Here are five tips to effectively expand your business across multiple locations.
Establish best practices
Before any expansion, it’s important to standardize the processes established at your original location in order to apply them to additional locations. This means outlining best practices for all aspects of your business – everything from inventory management to customer service.
One example is the necessity to have a standardized process for onboarding employees. New team members should receive training and documentation that covers:
- Compliance – your business’ rules and policies
- Clarification – employee roles and responsibilities
- Culture – your business’ history and mission
- Connection – getting to know the team and location(s)
Another example is the importance of documenting brand guidelines. Your business’ style guide should include things like your brand’s font, colors, tone, voice, and more. A brand folder should at a minimum include your logo in different sizes depending on need (online, print, etc.) as well as photographs of your products and business.
These best practices should be communicated clearly and followed at each location to maintain brand consistency, uniform customer experience, and operational efficiency.
Empower local managers
With one location, management is relatively easy. With multiple locations, it becomes a bit more complex. You now must centralize a certain amount of management to make sure each location runs in a similar manner. Much of this is achieved once you establish best practices for your business.
Strong central management is important. You want the entire team working in the same direction toward a shared goal. But you must also empower managers at each of your locations. They understand the overall business, but they can also quickly respond to any opportunities and challenges that arise at their location on a daily basis. Sometimes individual locations will even have something of their own sub-culture and identity, which can be good for employees and customers alike.
As you expand, regularly touch base with each local manager to celebrate their successes and help address their concerns. You really need to understand their experience with both employees and customers. This could be a combination of in-person and virtual meetings. Communication is critical to understanding every aspect of your growing business and building a unified team.
Invest in technology
Technology assists small businesses in multiple ways, but it is especially helpful when working to expand your enterprise. There are solutions that can facilitate your team’s communication, collaboration, and reporting across locations. There are also solutions that provide a central hub for business files, documents, and resources so each location has access to the same tools and information.
According to ComputerWorld, 89% of small businesses currently rely on 2 or more cloud services, such as:
- Email
Examples: Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook - Collaboration tools
Examples: Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx - Storage and backup
Examples: Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive - SaaS (Software as a Service)
Examples: Salesforce, QuickBooks Online, Microsoft Office 365 - Messaging and video conferencing
Examples: Slack, WebEx, Zoom - Website hosting
Examples: GoDaddy, GreenGeeks, A2 Hosting - POS systems
Examples: Square, Lightspeed, Clover - Apps
Examples: social media, retail, finance
In addition, it’s important to provide ongoing training to employees at each location to ensure they are well-versed in using these technologies and following your business’ standardized processes.
Increase security
Clearly cloud computing has become invaluable to small businesses. Case in point: 94% of companies are now using the cloud. As we just discussed, businesses use it for everything from email and video conferencing to software and storage.
One of the many benefits of the cloud is how secure it can be. In fact, McAfee reports that the majority of organizations experience better security in the cloud than IT environments that are set up on site. However, according to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud report, 73% of small business owners say security remains their top challenge in using the cloud.
As your business expands, you must take even greater control over your security. Some easy but extremely effective places to start include:
- Understanding what security you currently have in place
- Controlling access rights
- Setting up strong passwords (and changing them regularly)
- Setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Training to identify and avoid malware and phishing
- Regularly reviewing what you keep in the cloud
We discuss how to stay safe in the cloud in more detail on the blog. In addition, incorporating solutions like Meraki Go’s Router Firewall Plus and WiFi 6 access points immediately increases each location’s cybersecurity and protection against malicious attacks.
Evaluate regularly
Every business operation has its own set of key performance indicators (KPIs). Those include everything from sales targets and marketing performance to customer satisfaction scores and employee turnover rates. They may even vary slightly from location to location. As you expand, set expectations and benchmarks for the business overall and then regularly assess each location. Analyze the data and use the insights to identify areas that need improvement and recognize successes for the team.
***
The ability to expand your small business into multiple locations is exciting but takes a tremendous amount of work. Managing multiple locations requires a combination of clear communication, standardized processes, and the flexibility for each location to respond to their unique needs. The great news is that technology can really empower and support all aspects of your business as it grows.
Meraki Go wants to be a partner in your expanding business. Our Router Firewall Plus with site-to-site VPN allows you to connect and manage multiple locations under a single secure network. All Meraki Go devices come with built in business-grade security along with the ability to set up multi-factor authentication for an additional layer of protection. You can create separate networks for your different needs, such as business operations, POS systems, and Guest WiFi. You can also manage your entire network from anywhere with our intuitive mobile app and web portal.
Meraki Go gives you the security your business needs along with the ability to do so much for both your employees and customers. We’re here to help you grow.
SOURCES:
Flexera State of the Cloud report (2023)
North Carolina State University
SCORE
Square
