Is your business not growing as rapidly as you expected despite hard-working employees, robust sales efforts, and smart marketing campaigns? In such a scenario, you might be wondering if doing more will do the trick.
Not necessarily, since around 35% of startups in India fail as they channel time and money towards the wrong operational system or process. Rather, fixing the primary business bottleneck can help.
So, what is a bottleneck? It’s the constraint that prevents your entire operational system from achieving the output it’s capable of. Simply put, if progress is like a pipe, the bottleneck is its narrowest part.
It doesn’t matter how much money, effort, or manpower you pour into the pipe. Your business’s growth will be limited if the bottleneck isn’t addressed.
However, to do so, you must first identify the bottleneck accurately. Here’s how to go about it.
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Delving Deeper Into a Business Bottleneck
A bottleneck in business refers to that particular point in operations where work stalls, backs up, or becomes slow. It’s somewhat like traffic from three different lanes merging into one. And this negatively impacts productivity, revenue, and scalability.
So, what are some warning signs?Â
- Team members in one department struggling with extra workload while those in another sit idle
- Delivery getting delayed repeatedly
- Growth in revenue plateauing all of a sudden
- Customers complaining about response speed
However, simply looking at symptoms won’t tell you where the business bottleneck is.
Why Bottlenecks Are Often Misdiagnosed?
For many business owners, constraint looks like this – not enough leads, a small workforce, average marketing, or inadequate funds. But the actual bottleneck in business process might be slow onboarding, manual approvals, ineffective communication, delayed decision-making, workspace issues, or inefficient tools.
In fact, by 2030, India Inc is poised to incur a staggering loss of INR 8 lakhs per person every year, owing to poor communication.
For example, if your sales team isn’t quick with responses but you keep increasing the marketing spend, you won’t get the desired results. That’s because you are not really addressing the choke point.
Also Read: Major Problems In India That Can Be Solved by Entrepreneurs
Detecting the Bottleneck Actually Hindering Your Business’s Growth
Doing more everywhere is not the key to growing fast. Rather, you need to detect and fix the slowest step correctly. Here’s what’s involved:
- Map Your End-to-End Business ProcessÂ
- Focus on Output over Activity
- Spot the Constraint That Determines Revenue
- Watch Out for Tensed Areas
- Start Small When Testing ImprovementsÂ
1. Map Your End-to-End Business Process
Outline your core process, from lead generation, lead qualification, and sales conversion to client onboarding, delivery of product or service, and billing and retention. Then check where work is piling up, which step takes the most time to be completed, or where approvals get delayed. The answer will guide you towards the bottleneck in business process.
For instance, if 500 leads are generated by the marketing team every month but the sales team ends up contacting only 300, the bottleneck is sales capacity.
2. Focus on Output over Activity
Activity doesn’t necessarily translate to the desired output. For example, your team might be busy all the time, but results might still be unsatisfactory.
Decision-making might be slow even when the number of meetings goes up. Or you might not see any uptick in productivity despite hiring more people. In that case, the constraint might be structural.
In fact, here are some common examples of bottlenecks in business, and they go beyond the technical:
- Dependency on One Individual: Do you require one person (be it the founder or a C-suite leader) to approve all major business decisions? Then their availability will determine how fast things get done or how growth happens.
- Delays in Hiring: Sure, landing new projects is an effective way to grow. However, if your employee onboarding process is not structured or you don’t have enough workspace to accommodate new hires, scaling will stall. Â
- Manual Systems: Did you know that 47% of Indian companies still derive workforce insights through manual reporting? However, depending on spreadsheets, sorting through applications manually, or entering data by hand consumes much time, introduces errors, and increases the possibility of rework.
- Workspace Limitations: Are you short on office space but your team is growing? Or you might be struggling with unreliable internet connectivity, insufficient meeting space, or the lack of discussion zones. It invariably leads to chaos, reduced productivity, poor collaboration, and slow decision-making.
- Gaps in Communication: If communication across teams or departments isn‘t clear or efficient, it can hurt everything – from process execution to delivery timeline to product quality. Instead of solving problems, employees will more likely waste hours passing the blame.
3. Spot the Constraint That Determines Revenue
Say your office space is enough to cater to a maximum of 30 clients every month. In that scenario, the number 30 decides how much revenue your company can earn, even if the demand for your service is higher.
Hence, infrastructure is the biggest constraint or business bottleneck in this case. For other businesses, the constraint might be lead generation, customer retention, conversion rate, or delivery turnaround time. Simply put, your key bottleneck is the one that impacts revenue the most when improved.
4. Watch Out for Tensed Areas
The bottleneck area typically feels high-energy or tense. You might catch the members of one team working overtime frequently, looking frustrated, or always doing urgent tasks while another team has nothing on the plate. Hence, a bottleneck in business triggers imbalance.
Digging deeper will help uncover why you sense tension in a specific area. For instance, the sales team might be staying back regularly because there’s only one meeting room and they have to wait long for their turn.
Or they might be struggling with call drops due to poor network. Moving to a coworking space with plenty of meeting rooms and stable connectivity can help in that situation.
Also Read: Important Tips to Become a Successful Woman Entrepreneur
5. Start Small When Testing Improvements
Zeroing in on the primary bottleneck or one that’s truly limiting your organisation’s growth isn’t always straightforward. You might have to test small fixes first before arriving at a practical conclusion. So, depending on the bottleneck suspected, you can:
- Grow the sales team by an extra member
- Automate a particular approval process
- Improve the structure to on-board clients
- Invest in better tools for collaboration
- Move to a flexible coworking space with modern facilities (cafeteria, printing, high-speed internet, lockers etc.)
If a certain improvement has a significant effect on output, you know what your constraint is. If not, you need to keep looking for the bottleneck elsewhere.
Remove Constraints and Improve Continuously for Sustainable Growth
Unless you widen the primary bottleneck or tightest constraint, your business will not progress as expected, no matter how hard you work on doing more elsewhere. Whether the narrowest part of your progress pipeline is automation gaps, operational delays, or limited workspace, removing the bottleneck is essential to improve growth momentum.
Also remember that removing the primary bottleneck doesn’t mean other constraints won’t crop up afterwards. Hence, adopt an approach of continuous improvement. Identify the chief business limiter at a time, address it, reassess, and repeat the process. This will help you grow in a steady and sustainable manner.
💡 Are you looking for Coworking space in Gurgaon, Noida or Delhi? We are just a call away. Call Now:  08999 828282
Clarity Is the Key to Finding the True Business Bottleneck
When your business isn’t growing as fast as you would like it to, avoid putting in random effort. Instead, study your workflow, identify the step that is most restrictive (especially in terms of revenue), and fix it in small, incremental steps.
Also remember that bottlenecks aren’t always technical. They can be environmental or structural too.
For instance, is it your infrastructure that’s acting as the constraint due to long lease commitments, inadequate space, or a lack of modern solutions? Then opt for a flexible, scalable alternative equipped with the latest technologies.
The Office Pass (TOP) has 9 accessible and well-furnished coworking offices across Delhi, Noida, and Gurgaon to pick from. Call on 08999 828282 to explore TOP’s membership plans and facilities that support fast growth, free from bottlenecks.
