5 Top Tips to Support a Manufacturing Growth Strategy

Taking the time out to plan your growth strategy is an essential piece of work. If you are looking to deliver sustainable and profitable market share growth, you should:

1) clearly set out your vision for the business.

2) define what measurable success looks like.

3) prioritise your goals and objectives.

4) and work with a robust framework to deploy your plan.

Don’t do this alone! Engage with your team and key people to harness their expertise, knowledge, experience and their passion. Taking this approach is the first step in aligning your team and the organisation around your growth strategy. You will have alignment and clarity when everyone in the business can answer 3 questions…

1) Where are we going?

2) How are we going to get there?

3) What is my role in developing and deploying the plan?

They say every business is different and of course this is true, however, there are many more similarities than differences across Manufacturing SME’s; there are some fundamentals or core ingredients within the planning activity that hold good regardless of the products you make or the services you deliver.

Based on my experience here are my current top 5 tips that are critical in preparing a robust Growth Strategy. They may well seem obvious, but I meet a lot of businesses that will declare an ambition to grow but have no real market data or intelligence, no visible plan, no process to capture customer insights, and they are not able to articulate their competitive advantage. In some cases, the business does not have the capacity and/or the capability to grow.

Achieving excellence in business growth requires a combination of strategic planning, operational efficiency and adaptability.

Tip #1 – Conduct a Deep Dive SWOT

A SWOT is best way to kickstart the planning process. I prefer the deep dive approach rather than the classic ‘state of the nation' 4 box SWOT. We have a free downloadable SWOT template if you are interested in taking a different and more in-depth approach to your SWOT analysis. The deep dive approach invites you to ask yourself challenging questions about your business, to rate each of your activities and functions, and to prepare SWOT statements. The outcome being you will have clear actionable insights from the analysis.

This analysis should also bring real clarity to what you will continue doing (because it works) and what needs to change. In addition, this process will assist you in defining your Competitive Advantage, your Value Proposition and your Ideal Customer.

Tip #2 – Do Your Market and Customer Research

When carrying out market and customer research the core 6 questions to ask yourself are:

• Do you have the market data and intelligence required to understand your market share and your position and the macro trends that will present risks and/or opportunities going forward?
• Do you have an intimate understanding of your customers’ needs and a process to innovate to meet these needs? This includes collecting feedback, analysing trends and adapting your offer to stay relevant.
• Do your products and services solve real problems and create value to ensure you delight and retain your ideal customers?
• Can you expand your market reach and diversify your customer base by entering niche or adjacent markets where you have a competitive edge?
• Can you collaborate with other manufacturers or your supply chain to enter new segments or regions?
• Can you utilise digital marketing and SEO to expand your horizon and reach in your domestic or export markets?

Tip #3 – Build Scalable Processes and Invest in Technology and Automation

The pressure for UK manufacturing businesses to improve productivity is continually increasing. When hit with rising costs, you either pass it on to your customers, or you work on improving your own internal productivity.

Establish efficient systems and processes that are scalable as your business grows. You need to foster a continuous effort and culture in the business focused on automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows and investing in technologies that improve productivity.

Utilise AI to automate and connect your processes. At the time of writing this, it may feel like AI is the new kid on the block that you don’t need to worry about yet, but it is gaining pace by the week and many businesses within the manufacturing sector are finding ways of adopting AI to improve their processes. Don’t be left behind. Start to explore now if you haven’t already.

You can streamline your operations both within manufacturing and in your back-office processes with lean manufacturing techniques. Read this article for a few ideas on how to embrace lean in your manufacturing business. Conducting a value stream mapping exercise to identify production inefficiencies that drain resources and limit scalability, is often a great exercise to carry out with your team and make dramatic improvements. A great way to find automation opportunities too.

Finally, ensure you have a process to measure whether your team are trained and aligned with your growth objectives. Have a performance management process in place and foster a culture based on accountability, performance and excellence.

Tip #4 – Leverage Data-Driven Decision Making

Ensure you have a great CRM system in place and use analytics to track performance KPI’s and metrics that drive growth. A great CRM system will help you to identify growth opportunities and address challenges through good intelligence. Getting the discipline in place with a CRM system can be tricky, but when done well, will be the tool that ensures you are making decisions based on facts and data, and not guessing.

Utilise activity-based costing to understand your true cost to serve existing and new customers, and to understand customer and product profitability and ROI. You need to understand and protect your margins as you grow. Focusing on the top line and not protecting your margins, is where a lot of businesses fail in a big way.

When preparing your growth strategy, you should fully assess and cost all your growth options. Have a vision and strategy that is based on facts and intelligence. Most businesses focus on organic growth, but it may be a better option for you to consider the case for acquisitive growth. There are more ideas on acquisitive growth in this article: The Case for Acquisitive Growth; Use Your High Beam.

Tip #5 – Prepare Your Risk Assessment

And finally, when you have your growth strategy prepared, taking the time to prepare thorough risk assessments at the macro and micro level will heighten awareness and increase your chances of success.

To a lot of entrepreneurial business leaders assessing and mitigating risks can feel like a chore and taking the focus away from growth. But on the back of every risk there lies an opportunity. It’s a great exercise to do with the team and get everyone engaged in reducing and eliminating risks.

We have highlighted the main risks we see holding a lot of manufacturing businesses back from growth and effectively deploying their strategies in this article, 12 Common Reasons Your Implementation Plan is Failing.

This article was written by Simon Carin , one of the Business Growth Experts within the Manufacturers’ Alliance team. Simon had been a General Manager for over 3 decades and has worked at Board level as an MD in the UK and in Europe, with businesses such as, Saint Gobain, Graham Group and Jewson for nearly 20 years. The people he led consistently delivered profitable growth ahead of the market, and top line growth that enhanced bottom line and ROI.