Whether you are a small business owner or large corporation, it’s always beneficial to determine new ways to make your business more efficient. The more efficient your business is, the more productive your business becomes. The more productive your business becomes, the more capable you are of expanding to the next level. Higher efficiency also leads to higher employee satisfaction creating a more friendly, collaborative environment, which leads back to higher efficiency. See where this is going?
A common complaint amongst employees is often a lack of communication. This leads to misinterpretation, which creates a slow down on a work project or one that gets completed incorrectly. These gaps in communication create more work as projects need to get corrected. This also leads to meetings to determine what went wrong. Strong communication eliminates these costly errors.
Be sure that all projects and employee roles are clearly defined. Give your employees an outlet for asking questions and sharing concerns where they know they will be heard and respectfully answered.
Be sure that all of your technology is up to date and reliable. This is not an area where you want to cut corners to save money. Unreliable technology can mean slow response times or loss of data. It also means that there is more likely better and faster technology out there to accomplish what you are looking for. So, while the upfront cost may be a little more, you end up saving money and time in the long run.
Most people don’t realise just how much time is wasted throughout their day. Take some time to begin tracking this for yourself. Do you spend an hour each morning on email? Is all of that time for business related emails? Are you on social media? If so, is it relevant to what you want to accomplish for the day? Be diligent and stingy with your time. With each task, ask yourself, “Does this get me closer to my business goal for the day? The week? The month?” If the answer is yes, keep going. If the answer is no, eliminate it.
Is your company a meetings company? You know the ones where there is a meeting for every topic and a topic for every meeting? Are they necessary? This goes hand in hand with the tip above. For each meeting you should be asking yourself if it has strong potential for furthering your business goals. If not, don’t have it. Perhaps you can send a blanket email out to all of the employees involved with the notes you expected to share. In 5 minutes you have now accomplished what may have taken 30 minutes or more.
If you send out regular weekly emails, use your email service to automate them. Most services provide this. If yours doesn’t, search for one that can. If you make regular bank withdrawals/deposits, automate them by using using bacs transfer services services. Bacs payment software will provide faster payments and increase efficiency, so it’s definitely something worth looking into.
Create standard emails and documents that are used company wide. Not only does this eliminate the extra work of creating new ones each time, but it creates a recognisable brand. When your customer receives the document or email, they automatically know it’s from your business before they have even have a chance to open it.
No one likes to think that the unthinkable can happen. While it takes time, effort, and money to prepare for a worst case scenario, the alternative is to recover your business after it has happened. This involves far more time, effort, and money. Document everything, back up all work, and purchase the necessary supplies and technology that prepares you today for the unlikely event of tomorrow.
Using these six tips as ways to make your business more efficient ultimately affects your bottom line. These tips lead to more content employees who are no longer wasting their time on meaningless tasks. You now have processes in place to help you manage your time efficiently. Your focus shifts from menial but important tasks to exciting projects that clearly bring you one step closer to your business goals.
Featured image: By NASA/Jeff Caplan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
