Scalability Definition

Scalability is a business term describing the ability of an organization, software, system, or approach to fit the growing company’s needs and expectations. An excellent scalability occurs when the company may easily pursue its growth using the same set of tools.

What does being scalable mean?

In some cases, businesses experience unexpected changes, like a rapid growth over the course of days or weeks, instead of years. Such changes come with greater needs, like more tickets to support, more customers to serve and more orders to fulfill. If the existing system is scalable enough, there won’t be any problems, but if the selected solutions lack scalability, it may be crucial to switch to other systems. That generates costs, requires time and personnel to perform. That is why scalability is one of the most popular business terms in recent years.

The benefits of scalability

Being scalable means being prepared for the future. What other benefits, besides a sense of security, does it bring?

• Scalability saves money – a scalable company has enough resources, personnel and technology backup at its disposal, to deal with unexpected increase of workload and demands it comes with.

For example: maintaining and paying for a larger office requires certain financial resources, but when the company decides to recruit more personnel, it will already have enough space, which will be much cheaper than having to seek for a new location and moving the whole company (or at least a part of it) elsewhere.

• Scalability guarantees faster deployment – whenever there’s an unexpected spike, having access to scalable solutions (like API-based cloud software) shortens the time needed for implementing changes. Instead of looking for a solution that meets exceeded requirements, a company can upgrade the existing software for a higher plan in a matter of minutes.

• Scalability promises effectiveness – a scalable business remains as effective as always even in times of changing market demands, customer behavior and growing workload. That ensures business partners and customers that their interests are safe with your company.