As startups in Southeast Asia face significant market opportunities, many are looking to accelerate business growth and scale across digital marketplaces. But successfully transitioning from a startup to scaleup mindset — in a global climate of uncertainty — presents some major challenges.
As customer expectations are rising, there is a growing need for startups to invest in the relevant technology stack to build customer loyalty. Here are some of the challenges and opportunities that startups need to be aware of to drive efficient growth and build lasting customer relationships.
Growth challenges for startups
Scalable businesses are built on future-proof processes. From agile internal workflows that enable organisation-wide collaboration, to delivering personalised customer journeys across all channels — your business processes are the engine of your growth.
Then there’s funding to think about. Access to a constant source of funding will help put your startup on the growth highway. But how do you attract real interest from venture capitalists and investors? And where do you spend that funding to achieve maximum growth?
Startups also need to build an employer-of-choice workplace culture that drives talent acquisition and retention, and prioritises collaboration and innovative thinking.
Critical growth drivers for startups
These can be difficult challenges to overcome on your own. But you don’t need to face them alone. Expert insights from trusted mentors can help fill your scalability knowledge gap and accelerate your growth.
With capable mentorship and careful go-to-market planning, startups are better placed to develop an effective growth strategy that prioritises three critical growth drivers.
- Customer centricity: Put your customers at the centre of everything you do to drive personalised, intuitive customer journeys.
- Smart investment: Allocate resources to key growth enablement areas, while avoiding investing in blackholes that don’t impact revenue.
- Process optimisation: Improve your business productivity with automation and tools that optimise your workflows and reduce operating costs.
Process optimisation is key here. As startups continue to grow, it is important to focus on growing efficiently. Your technology stack is the foundation of all three growth drivers.
From a CRM that delivers a 360-degree customer view, to real-time reporting that informs investment decision making, and automation tools that optimise business processes — the right tech stack can take your business from a high-potential startup to a rapidly-growing scaleup.
Salesforce research has shown that by consolidating systems together in Customer 360, it lowers IT costs by 25%*, increases employee productivity by 26%*, and customer satisfaction by 32%*. With Salesforce, companies can grow efficiently by improving productivity and automation, reduce the number of technology providers they need to manage their business, save time and money, and reduce complexity.
Accelerate your growth with Salesforce’s MasterClass
Sounds great? But how do you actually get it done?
Salesforce’s MasterClass Accelerator 101 webinar is helping to connect startups with the expert mentorship you need to successfully navigate Southeast Asia’s vibrant USD$360 billion (SGD$500 billion) internet economy.
In this webinar, I joined other industry experts to discuss how you can innovate, grow, and scale your startup with the right tools from the right people.
- Daisy Hoang, SVP of Sales and Success at Katalon
Daisy is a senior revenue generation and management executive with extensive experience scaling go-to-market strategies for SaaS technology companies. She spoke about how an efficient technology stack is the foundation of hyperscaling at Katalon.
Katalon has used Sales Cloud to support the company’s scale up and achieve an approximately four-fold increase in the revenue team over the span of 12 months. Sales Cloud has also reduced 70% of manual tasks related to communication for clients’ renewals, improved the conversion rate, increased accurate forecasting by 50%, and drove accountability of the reps.
- Danny Chong, Senior Investment Director at Gobi Partners China
Danny is a highly successful venture capital professional with a focus on funding early-stage startups in Greater China and Southeast Asia.
Growth insights from startup experts
In the webinar, Daisy, Danny, and I set out a roadmap to help startups move from exploring your potential to scaling your company across countries.
We discussed how to gain access to the opportunities that enable startups to accelerate their growth, and how to use the right technology to create a competitive edge in the digital-first future.
In our discussion, Daisy speaks about building a tech foundation ahead of the curve. “Some of the investments [Katalon] made last year, we actually thought were a bit early for us to make those investments. Maybe six months early. But it is now paying off big time by helping us really scale and onboard the team.”
“I encourage everybody, as part of your scale up journey, to proactively identify areas that are prime for automation. Pulling tech resources early to help scale, record, document, and then at the end bring up the ROI, is extremely important,” she advises.
You’ll learn from this masterclass how to view digitisation as an opportunity to grow faster in Southeast Asia’s digital economy, and how to build a tech stack that will help to:
- Optimise your operational processes
- Deliver personalised customer journeys
- Support an employer-of-choice workplace culture
We also talked about how to best navigate the funding journey, including current trends venture capitalists are seeing in successful startups, and how to get noticed by investors.
Small business is big business
If there’s one key message that I’d love for you to take away, it’s that small business is big business. The right tech stack can give an early-stage startup the agility and competitive power of a large enterprise player.
I see it happen every day at Salesforce. We’re constantly helping our customers to drive cost savings and scale their business efficiently. Many of our customers use Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to create a single source of customer truth, break down departmental silos, deliver personalised customer journeys, and create collaborative workplace cultures that drive efficient growth.
This is how high-potential startups become highly-successful companies.
For more growth insights from startup up experts, watch MasterClass Accelerator 101: How you can innovate, grow, and scale your startup now.
How can a CRM help startups and SMEs grow more efficiently? Get the recipe for success now.
