Growth is the goal of practically every company. But in practice, increasing sales does not always mean making more money. In many businesses, especially in e-commerce, growth ends up revealing a little-noticed problem: the operation stops keeping pace with the company.

According to Henrique Russo, director of operations at Orange Envios, a platform specialized in logistics management and freight intelligence for e-commerce, this scenario usually appears when processes that worked well in the beginning no longer serve a more complex operation.

“Many companies grow using spreadsheets, manual controls and improvised processes. As long as the volume is small, this works. But, as sales increase, delays, rework, loss of productivity and costs that do not always appear clearly in the reports begin to appear”, he explains.

Growth requires organization

In recent years, e-commerce has matured and started to face a new challenge. After a period in which the focus was on selling more and more, companies began to realize that growing without organization could reduce profitability. It is precisely at this stage that bottlenecks appear in areas such as logistics, service, integration between systems and operational management. Small failures start to repeat themselves, increase costs and directly affect the customer experience.

According to Henrique Russo, one of the most common mistakes is believing that the same processes used at the beginning of the company will continue to work when the operation doubles or triples in size. “Growth ends up exposing problems that were previously hidden. The company begins to have difficulty tracking orders, controlling information, measuring indicators and maintaining the same level of efficiency. If nothing is adjusted, these problems grow with the business”, he states.

Operations as a growth challenge

Logistics is usually one of the first areas to feel this impact. With more orders, more carriers, new delivery regions and increasingly demanding consumers, any operational failure can lead to delays, re-deliveries, increased costs and complaints. In addition to the financial losses, the customer experience is also affected. Late deliveries or communication problems reduce the chances of repurchase and damage the company’s reputation.

Another frequent behavior is to concentrate practically all investments on acquiring new customers, leaving the necessary structure to meet this increase in demand in the background.

“There is a tendency to invest first in marketing and sales. But there comes a time when the challenge stops being to win customers and becomes delivering what was sold. If the operation does not keep up with this growth, the company sells more, but makes less profit”, says Henrique Russo.

The path to sustainable expansion

In this process, technology also gains a new role. systems managementautomation and data intelligence are no longer just support tools and start to help organize the operation. One Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) continues to be important, but, alone, it is often no longer able to meet all the complexity of an expanding company.

For the expert, companies that will be able to grow sustainably will be those that invest not only in increasing sales, but also in strengthening the structure that supports this growth.

“In the end, growth is not just about selling more. It’s about being able to provide better service, control costs, maintain quality and transform this increase in demand into profit. When the operation evolves at the same pace as sales, growth stops being a risk and becomes an advantage for the business”, concludes Henrique Russo.

By Carolina Lara