We like to talk a lot about business growth and innovation. But what is business growth? How does it work, and what does it take? Is growth even possible without innovation and business management software?
In today’s article we are going to talk about one of our amazing partners – Xero. Look at how Xero managed to not only achieve rapid growth, but also create a stable growth pattern and reach over 2.7 Million subscribers since their start in 2006 by simply removing the ‘boring’.
So if you’re thinking “I am happy with my business the way it is”, and you are 100% sure that your business is as successful and profitable as it’s ever going to be, then maybe, just maybe – this article really isn’t for you. In any other case – it’s important to dedicate some thinking to ‘growth’.
One of the most common errors that we see as consultants in relation to growth is a misunderstanding of the different growth facets of a business and their intricate correlations and evolution throughout the entire life-journey of a business.
We hope that the story of Xero Accounting Software will help shed some positive light on growth aspects such as growth in:
- Knowledge
- Skill
- Assets
- Capabilities
- Revenue streams
- Infrastructure
- Market-share
- Geographical coverage
- Resources
- Compliance
- Efficiency
- Reputability
- Competitiveness
- And more!
Because growth is not just about horizontals and verticals – growth is about continual improvement engraved in the very core of your organisational strategy. At its essence growth is all about your values!
Xero decided that their five key values will be:
- Human
- Challenge
- Team
- Ownership
- Beautiful
But how do these values create, promise or foster any business growth?
Through their values, Xero essentially said “We will give our customers the best level of care that we can, we will continue to evolve and improve our knowledge and capability, we will ensure everyone in our team is included, consulted and has a sense of purpose, we will hold ourselves accountable and right our wrongs , and we will create delightful and inspiring pleasurable experiences for our clients”.
And here is what it translates to through the eyes of ISO:
We have a strong idea of our organisational context and our objectives. We know who our interested parties are and what their needs and expectations are. We are customer focused and we have a strong and committed leadership team that supports its employees and provides the necessary knowledge, resources and infrastructure. We aim for continual improvement and we evaluate our operations and plan ahead what needs to be done.
With a clean-cut understanding of what they are (a SaaS Accounting company providing business management software) and with an understanding of their target slice in the global market (small businesses) they were able to quickly focus on filling up the gap of what was missing in the market – a beautiful, visually satisfying, user friendly, cloud-based business management software for accounting.
Clause 8 of the ISO Standard talks about Operation. Some of the things to consider when looking after your operation are planning and controlling your operations, the requirements and design of your products and services, your change management, customer communication and control of non-conforming outputs. And if we want to briefly align it to what we know about Xero so far, we can talk in simple terms of leading and lagging indicators – Xero have thoroughly studied the market trends and understood what was lacking and what were the needs of their existing and prospective customers at the time – a study that is commonly referred to as VOC or (voice of customer) and VOM (Voice of Market).
Xero then studied the trends of technological development, estimated what will be required over the horizon and planned their growth according to this potential. Their leading indicators were such things as the planning for changes, risks, opportunities, demands, variations, resourcing, infrastructure, training, data collection, design specifications, work instructions, HR, design testing and controls, ways to manage customer data, objectives, etc. They are called leading indicators because they come in the pre-execution stage and give you a relatively easy insight into your R&D, financial investment and quality assurance.
Their lagging indicators were the reduction in customer complaints, improvement in customer satisfaction, results of audits and performance measurements, growth in customers, reduction of waste and non-conformities and more. Lagging indicators are labelled ‘lagging’ because they give you a clear insight only after you have executed. But comparing your leading and lagging indicators helps you create continuous improvement.
Xero achieved a trend of continuous improvement and customer delight by creating an incredible piece of business management software that delivers all the functions simply concisely, quickly and easily – and as a result, Forbes recognised them as the World’s Most Innovative Growth Company in
You see, growth for the sake of becoming bigger may look good – but it won’t give you the real muscle strength and power your business needs.
What can give you both is a combination of a growth mindset, a commitment to your own core values, and the intelligent use of innovation to place you in maximum control!
Like Xero, KIM by Kynection provides One System and One Vision to put you in the driver seat of success! It’s the perfect business management software for small businesses! KIM improves your workplace communication and helps you meet your quality objectives. KIM also integrates with Xero and provides an invoice approval system, a quoting system, matched to an amazing human resources system with time & attendance, and one of the friendliest and most powerful scheduling app around.. and best of all KIM has those important dashboards to help you identify your continual improvement opportunities.
…And if you ask one of our team they will openly say that’s only the beginning!
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