Guest Post: Simplify Your Business Organization to Increase Productivity
Today’s companies need to embrace the latest disruptive technologies in order to grow and develop, and at the same time, they’re faced with an increase in customers’ needs and demands. All this means introducing a lot of new business processes, which, in turn, leads to complicating the workflow and increasing the workload. Needless to say, overhead costs grow too, while employees tend to become frustrated and disengaged. If we bear in mind that 85% of the global workforce are either not engaged or are actively disengaged at work, it’s clear that streamlining business processes and simplifying your business organization will increase productivity and boost your profit.
Reduce the number of meetings
While they are important for the flow of information, meetings can be huge time wasters and productivity killers. For example, senior executives spend more than 2 days a week while an organization spends 15% of its time in meetings. When translated into financial resources, it turns out that in the US, companies throw away $25 million a day, or a whopping $37 billion a year, on unnecessary meetings. Instead of running lengthy meetings, use email blasts, or even better, team communication tools to keep everyone informed and on the same page. Another idea is to have some quick, stand-up meetings during which only the employees directly involved in the process or task will be present. This way your employees will be aware that meetings won’t be dragged-out and tedious, which means that they’ll show up and be focused.
Leverage automation
Instead of relying on a mountain of paperwork, automate your document management and go paperless. With the help of professionals, you can implement document management solution that will improve the information flow within your company and have everything in one place where it’s easily accessible. Apart from enabling team and customer collaboration by sharing documents, you’ll also be able to speed up approval processes, prevent jams, and get things done faster by implementing electronic signature tools. Finally, given that your clients are concerned about the privacy of their sensitive information, a reliable cloud-based software will make sure that their data is absolutely protected.
Standardize processes
One of the best ways of simplifying your business is by standardizing recurrent processes. In other words, why wasting time repeating the same or similar task over and over again if you can create templates and save a lot of time? Standardization rests on finding the best way of doing things, that is, implementing the best practices. This results in better productivity and easier process improvement. In addition to that, adopting standard methods for doing things in your company will make it much easier to break in new employees and show them the ropes. Standardization is one of the key pillars of the Toyota Production System also known as Kanban, a management approach which focuses on quality and consistency.
Outsource
The advancement of new technologies has enabled a new way of outsourcing and finding the right people for the job from the global talent pool. This means that you’ve got a chance to hire various professionals who work from home as freelancers even if they don’t live in the same city, country or even on the same continent. Another way to boost the productivity of your business is by introducing a telecommuting option. If you’re having second thoughts, take your cue from Dell, as the IT giant managed to save $12 million on real estate costs only, while some estimates say that the company saved almost $40 million in total by allowing and even encouraging their employees to work from home. Besides reducing the overhead costs, Dell announced that their telecommuting employees were even more productive as they could work from the comfort of their homes and avoid numerous open-office distractions.
Add “no” to your vocabulary
Sometimes entrepreneurs and managers tend to bite off more than they can chew and pile up tasks and responsibilities. It’s only logical to always be looking for business opportunities, but if non-selectively applied, this idea can only lead to wasting your time, energy, and resources on things that aren’t your top priority. Instead of that, it’s essential to assess every situation separately and ask yourself “What’s in it for me and my business?” Learning to say no to things that aren’t exactly profitable can significantly increase your productivity. When it comes to making promises, make sure that you do that only when you know that you can deliver. Now that the multitasking myth has been busted and that research studies have shown that the practice of doing several things at the same time only reduces our productivity, it’s time to come to terms with our own limitations. A day has only 24 hours and the best way to be productive and get things done is to be 100% focused on every individual task.
These straightforward tips can help you simplify your business and boost your and your employees’ productivity.
Emma Worden is a startup funding consultant from Sydney. She enjoys reading and writing on different aspects of entrepreneurship, usually finance and marketing. If you want to read more of her work, you can find it at https://bizzmarkblog.com/
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