In this stage, efficient cash flow and operations management become critical. When you start increasing production, these factors will affect your ability to deliver on time and in full.

It may feel like there is always a problem to solve – finding the cash to pay your suppliers, hunting for a bank loan, or talking to countless potential investors. Long-term planning and strategy may feel out of reach.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to optimize your cash flow and operations to unlock growth. 

How scaling businesses are affected

Let’s first understand what’s happening now:

• Orders are managed on systems that don’t talk to each other: Static documents or spreadsheets contain the keys to the castle. If all your orders, payments, and other processes are in individual documents, it is hard to share updated information with your team in real-time.
• Payment terms are complex or unfavorable: Your large buyers have 30, 60, 90, or 120-day payment terms, but you wish you could be paid sooner. You don’t want to ask for a down payment or cash advance because you don’t want to signal weakness. On the other hand, you need to pay your suppliers. When you add negotiation opportunities or discount options to this complexity, it can be impossible to visualize the precise effects on your cash flow of any decision made.

Next, when demand rapidly increases, growing companies making great products may experience:

• Hesitancy on orders and ballooning backlogs: There is reluctance on large orders and slow sign offs to begin work. This can also show up as tension between sales and finance—excitement on the sales side is balanced by apprehension on the finance side because as orders get bigger, so do the challenges and risks of failure to execute, operationally and financially. Additionally, order backlogs increase with no end in sight.‍
• Cash flow crunches: Managing cash flow is a challenge, even when sales are strong. There is never a simple way to speed up receivables and delay payables without damaging your relationships or the financial health of those buyers and sellers.‍
• Feeling boxed in and reactive: There is always a fire to fight, even when demand is high. There are bottlenecks and silos, the team is scrambling regularly to respond to events, and there is no clear path ahead. You need to constantly think about how to keep the ship afloat, especially with changing economic and political winds like interest rate changes, trends in factory reshoring, or global tariff implications.

These challenges are sure signs that your team needs a new kind of map. Fortunately, you have all the data points you need to create it. 

Creating your own map

Unlike growing businesses, large businesses at the enterprise level will have access to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Hundreds, even thousands, of employee users will use this to collaborate and map their data. You might have heard of Oracle NetSuite or SAP S/4HANA if you sell to an enterprise buyer that requires you to make payments through these portals.

However, these ERPs typically are too complex and too expensive for a small, growing business. It takes too long to set up and customize, and the value for money (the ROI) may not be significant.

Yet still, one of the biggest yet overlooked secrets to unlock growth for scaling businesses with great products is mapping the steps from the moment a customer places an order to the payment is received.

This cycle is defined as Order-to-Cash (abbreviated as OTC or O2C). It encompasses order placement to payment. The steps include order management, order fulfillment, billing, payment processing, and reporting.

You already have all of the information you need to map your OTC cycle within your operations. You just need a new way to see it - a new perspective.

Understanding the intricacies of your own data

This leads us to ask: What do growing businesses need?

Ideally, you would see the flow of goods and money laid out on a time scale. The time scale would compare planned to actual milestones. Your entire team would have real-time access to easily understandable information. And you would be able to use this tool to unlock trapped working capital and find stable liquidity.

You would be able to understand the intricacies of your own data without complexity. Ultimately, you need something that provides visibility so you can make decisions at mission-critical moments.

You would have the flexibility, resiliency, intelligence, reliability, and financial health you need to navigate your unique business. 

Unlock growth sustainably

This is exactly what we’ve built at Klear. 

Our team of engineers designed a tech-enabled solution that allows you to map your OTC cycle without doing anything extra. You and your team either automate or perform the tasks necessary to your business – such as documenting purchase orders, invoicing, and more – and the app provides essential information to help you make decisions unique to your own growth strategy.

As you scale, the complexity of your operations and cash flow infrastructure increases exponentially, but using Klear helps you manage risk. More orders, more customers, more suppliers, more channels – all these factors can add strain on your team without the right tools. Klear helps with cross-functional coordination at every stage of your growth.

At Klear, we focus on enabling you to go faster and say “yes” to more orders. We focus on unlocking and injecting working capital into your existing infrastructure. We provide the essential tools so you can make decisions confidently.

Please contact us to learn more at success@klearbusiness.com.