There are several factors that compromise companies experiencing rapid growth namely;

Runaway costs

Typically, hypergrowth organisations have unique challenges to meet to remain solvent. They have huge cash burn rates and can easily go out of business if they fail to manage their operating expenses.

If a business sees costs growing significantly faster than revenue, or shrinking margins, it’s time to consider novel, lower cost options. Ultimately, a higher cost to acquire a customer than they are worth in the long-term is a red flag that could scare off investors.

This is where accurate forecasting and multiple scenario planning become critical to success. By connecting people, processes, and data, fintech companies are able to forecast their revenue, costs and liquidity more accurately on a monthly if not weekly, or daily basis.

With the right strategic focus, careful prioritisation, and well-informed action plan, hypergrowth businesses can navigate these potential challenges.

The hidden productivity killer – spreadsheets

Spreadsheets remain in use within most organisations and it’s easy to understand why. They are virtually cost free; a flexible adhoc reporting tool and most people have a basic understanding of how to use one.

The temptation is high to ‘throw together’ a quick spreadsheet to solve an immediate problem, rather than going through proper processes. However, there is a distinct line between an adhoc reporting tool and a scalable performance management solution.

Spreadsheets however tempting, are a hidden productivity killer. IT expenses appear to be lower, when in reality, the cost to the business is much higher because processes are being performed poorly with spreadsheets.

For businesses requiring nimble decision making, building out parallel scenarios plans or investing in significant expansion programmes, spreadsheets are not the solution.

To make sure that everyone is on the same page so that errors of interpretation do not occur and eliminate subjectivity, leaders should embrace technology and data, reinvent core processes, and adopt new collaboration tools.

Financial modelling by its nature requires flexibility in being able to extract, manipulate and visualise assorted data in a variety of ways. Leveraging technology to make faster, more informed business decisions, with employees all collaborating from a single data source is an investment well made.

Finally, eliminating manual processes, such as spreadsheet-based forecasting seems an obvious area to consider when looking for productivity gains.

For further information including how the latest hypergrowth trends and how to manage them, download our full whitepaper.

In our next blog of this series, we’ll be exploring organisational culture, how to scale your people and connecting your processes, so keep an eye on our social channels where we’ll be publishing details.