What is the relationship between business growth, productivity and technology?

There is a concern about businesses that grow without increasing profitability, as they may be employing more people and increasing the risk of failure as they grow. I've had a few arguments recently about whether business growth is a good thing or not.

Clearly, adding more people or more revenue is not the focus for growing a business, but then we could argue that it isn't businesses that grow – it's the people within businesses who grow and develop, and as they do the business naturally expands.

My business, Combo, has featured on all sorts of lists for its record growth, so I feel I can add a level of experience to this conversation.

Firstly, achieving increased revenue did not make us a smarter company. It took a dedicated approach to developing our people and our technology to ensure that we were a scalable business.

Simply selling and servicing more computers did not make us profitable; in fact, quite the opposite. The bigger we got the more layers of management were required, and the less profitable we became until we developed two aspects of the business.

1. The first was our people, and here we were fortunate to receive a grant from DIIRD that allowed us to train out staff with around 100 days of training in a single year. This enhanced their capabilities significantly.

2. Next, we developed computer-based systems for monitoring computers and call handling, which allows us to deal with increased volumes of calls in a more efficient way.

So, increased staff knowledge, skill and capability, combined with productivity tools, allowed us to increase revenue without significantly increasing staff. Therefore, we were able to drive significant growth and, once again, run a profitable company.

Working with dozens of businesses every year, we see the good and the bad in terms of the use of IT as a business productivity tool, and we know that it takes a concerted effort and ongoing development of communication methods and systems, as well as job specific tools, to ensure businesses become scalable.

I've heard arguments about remaining a niche player, and so not needing to grow, and that small business can therefore be better than large business. But, is this a reason to stay small or is it instead a lack of vision in regards to where the same team of people could be with better tools for managing IP and communications?

My thoughts on the relationship between growth, productivity and technology is that each should be set in a framework of development, and that no component should become static.

If your business needs help with the development of its IT systems for communication, business planning, HR management or productivity, seek the help of a trusted advisor who has firsthand experience in the issues of a growth business and the solutions available for your industry.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.