When using a fancy font for text, the only way to ensure it's always displayed correctly is to convert the text to a path. However, this seriously inflates the file size.

In theory, this could be mitigated if each glyph was used as clones so that the path is defined only once. The "Object to Path" functionality does not do this automatically.

Is there another way to achieve this result?

Not using just Inkscape.

It would require, Object>Object to Path.

Object>Split Path.

The extension code to compare and  make a list of every identical object, nominate one as the master, create a clone and translate it to the same position as the path it is replacing.

As Inklinea says, not using just Inkscape. However, search Google for "embedding fonts in svg" and you'll find plenty of interesting reading.

Here's one such link. https://vecta.io/blog/how-to-use-fonts-in-svg
They also provide an onlie tool that does the embedding for you. https://vecta.io/nano

Disclaimer: I haven't tested this myself.

If you want to have a mess about with this:

https://inkscape.org/forums/extensions/reclone/

I wrote it a few weeks ago as an experiment. 

It acts on the entire document ( just paths ). 

So might be useful to use with copy, paste in place on a blank doc for the elements you want to experiment on .