Running a business is one thing – but running it effectively, to maximum potential is quite another. The second ensures maximum profitability, a great experience for employees and a better reputation with customers and clients. However, it takes time and dedication to continuously improve processes and systems.
Working efficiently is a commitment that you make over time, and that you need to revisit as situations, markets and processes develop. It’s a gradual process of working out your most frequently done tasks and looking at home you can automate them to free up time. It’s a mindset of rejecting activities which don’t make progress towards your overall goals and focus on the ones that do.The end result is a well oiled machine, where all the individual components work in harmony to produce a fantastic end result. So take the tune to make streamlining a serious part of your working culture and get the best of people and processes to boost your company’s results.
1. Get Your Onboarding Right
Recruiting staff is a unique time for a business – a time of growth and opportunity, but equally a time that can be quite costly. So it’s important to handle the process carefully. There’s a lot you can do with process efficiency when it comes the onboarding process with new hires. Having a strong structure in place helps employees to get up and running in their new positions quickly.
They are also likely to feel more integrated into the company and therefore less likely to leave within a few months of starting. A consistent process using an online employee onboarding program also ensures that you guard against silos of knowledge forming – if every employee has a basic understanding of each area, then it’s easier to maintain service if someone does leave.
2. Maintaining System Updates
When you go through a necessary update with the systems or IT software that you use for working, having a plan to minimize the disruption to service is essential. Routine updates can seriously up end productivity, so make sure they are carried out as seamlessly as possible. Electric simplifies application management so that you can update all company devices in one go, so the loss to working time is as minimal as possible. Similarly, using a cloud based server can ensure that customer facing portals like your website experience minimal downtime is essential so there’s no disturbance to your operations.
3. Automating Routine Tasks
One of the biggest areas areas you can streamline operations and make budget savings and improvements is by looking at a range of the most frequently performed tasks by your business and seeing which ones can be automated. Thankfully there is a world of really effective, affordable software applications now. From programs to help you automatically generate and chase up invoices, to apps like Hootsuite which let you write content for social media and publish at later times, to tools like Trello which enable teams to work collaboratively over any distance, it’s getting easier to speed up working practices wherever you perform them most.
4. Get Your Data Organized
Most fledgling businesses operate on very lean cashflows for a while, and that means keeping a close eye on costs. If you choose to streamline the daily workflow then you may be looking at introducing a CRM system. This can be a fairly significant cost, but don’t be tempted to go without. With your data properly organized, you can use your data to gain profitable insight and automate your workflow processes for greater efficiency. It’s an investment that will help to grow your business and reduce costs further down the line.
5. Sort Out Your Meeting Schedule
No matter how much work goes on with email these days, there is still a need for meetings to establish contact, and that is time out of your day. Effective communication is a business requirement, but you can reduce the wasted time spent in meetings with a few very simple steps – always keep them to 30 minutes or less if possible, set an agenda in advance so that you know exactly what needs to be discussed and decided, understand what outcomes you need from the meeting, and always create some buffer time in your diary immediately afterwards so that you can process any actions straight away and they don’t become another item on a never-ending to do list. Handling meetings correctly is the cornerstone of diary management and will make a big change to streamlining your working day.
