Launching a Successful Startup

Why do some businesses fail while others take off almost right from the very beginning? Is it the services they provide or products they offer to their clients? Is it the way in which they conduct business or the competencies they possess that make or break a business?

Businesses could fail for a number of reasons, including:

• Inadequate budget
• Inadequate infrastructure (resulting from a tight budget)
• Lack of understanding about the market and customer needs
• Losing focus or purpose

The last item more often results from not outlining objectives clearly.

Establish Clear Business Goals

Establishing clear goals should be priority; most businesses fail because they lose focus and direction midway. Outlining and defining your goals gives you direction and allows you to progress systematically. It helps to define goals clearly. For small to mid-size businesses and enterprises, well-defined goals can help provide much-needed motivation as well.

Ideally, separate them into different sections like service goals, financial goals, and business development goals. Keep in mind that some goals will be dynamic, changing as the business gathers steam.

• Financial goals: If you think of profits first, you are not alone. But realistically, businesses need to break even before jumping to profitability. Your financial goals can include steps to first recover the funds you invested in starting the business. Cash flow management can help you in this process by allowing you to allocate specific sums for expenses.
• Business development: All businesses need to work at this constantly, if they have to grow. Whether it is tapping your customer base directly or including promotional marketing and advertising; outline your goals clearly.
• Service goals: This is also a good way to ensure consistency in your business, if you are more than a single founder or owner. Define and establish service goals, including delivery areas and limitations.

Understanding Core Competencies

When you first establish a service goal, you come closer to understanding your core competencies. Core competencies take into account ability together with the resources available to you. So, how do you identify and analyze your core competencies? To identify your core competencies, remember:

• Core competencies should be unique to your business; you should not have too many competitors offering it, otherwise it is not really your core competency.
• It should add value to your clients’ work or services or products.

To this end, your core competencies can be varied. They can be technical or related to a particular product. Your core competencies could lie in the way you deploy and manage a process such that your client can optimize their own resources and infrastructure best.

Identify areas lacking expertise

A startup may get crippled by lack of expertise in a specific area or industry. This can be reflected in terms of poor work quality, incorrect pricing strategies, or inaccurate delivery time.

Areas lacking in expertise can include a service, a process, or even something technical, such as a particular technology you may be unable to install.

For a small business, for example, utilizing technology can prove to be extremely advantageous. How often do you come across a website that seems promising, only to discover that the business backing it up cannot live up to its claims. Some businesses may not be able to afford current technology and expenses that come along with it. However, in current times, technology is woven across business functions and any incompetency could also surface in the administrative, operational or financial areas of a business which require their own expertise. Problems in any of these areas can impact startup operations, thus leading to failure.

Every business will face challenges at some point; success lies in resolving issues as best as you can.

If it is niche services like specific IT matters, accounting and financial matters, marketing services etc., you may be better served by outsourcing. Outsourcing can take care of your need for expertise, together with budget restraints.

Launching a successful startup involves hard work, discipline and a certain amount of business “know how”. Analytix Solutions has a team of experts who work with startups to improve their business processes and help move their company forward. For a free analysis of your business processes and more information on how we can help your business succeed, please contact us at sales@analytix.com

Written by

Analytix Editorial Team