The key to any successful business is efficiency. This is especially true when you have a newer business, where the margin for error is a lot smaller. If your business isn’t efficient, you’ll end up wasting precious time and resources, which will prevent the business from reaching its full potential.
Luckily, there are a number of strategies you can use to increase efficiency throughout your business. By using some of the strategies below, you will hopefully find that both you and your employees are able to get things done quickly without sacrificing quality.
Perform an Audit
The first thing you’ll want to do is perform an audit. An audit is when you take the time to analyze each aspect of your current business and look for the areas where you’re currently inefficient. The goal of the audit is to identify those trouble areas so you know what needs improving the most.
To perform an audit, you’ll want to map out how your business operates. For example, if you sell a product, you’ll want to list every stage of the process, from research and development to the final sale. Then, after you have the steps listed, you should drill down further into each one and examine how they operate. Look at things like how your employees conduct sales, how you ship out your products, or how you market your services.
Once you have mapped out exactly how your business does each action, you’ll have an easier time identifying where you need to improve. This audit will help guide the rest of the decisions you make and serve as an important document going forward.
Improve Team Communication
The next major thing you’ll want to focus on is how your team communicates with one another and with clients/customers. If your communication is off, it won’t matter much what other efficiency changes you make throughout the business. Your team needs to have a reliable and efficient way to talk and share information or the entire business will suffer.
Start by looking at how your team members can send messages to one another. Too many businesses rely solely on email, which can grow inefficient if you have to exchange a lot of messages. Look to incorporate something like Slack, which will allow your team to chat quickly throughout the day.
After that, look at how they share files. Again, if all communication is being done via email attachments, you’re not operating as efficiently as you could. Look at file-sharing software like Dropbox or Google Drive, or even get some dedicated file collaboration software. Make it so your team can share and edit important files with as little work as possible.
Delegate Tasks
For new entrepreneurs, it’s common to take on too much of the work yourself. Perhaps you’re just used to working alone or you feel like you’re the best person to perform each task. The problem is you don’t have the time to handle it all, so you need to properly delegate tasks.
Delegating tasks is essential for businesses of any size. Every member of the team needs to have their own assigned tasks so that people aren’t performing the exact same functions. If you find that you’re spending too much of your time on small tasks, you need to hand those off to someone else. And the same rule applies to everyone within the business – they should all be working on tasks that are suitable for their experience and skill level.
Automate What You Can
Perhaps the best thing you can do to increase efficiency throughout your new business is to look for ways to automate certain tasks. This is known as Business Process Automation. According to this great article by Prolifics, a Business Process Automation or BPA is designed to make businesses more efficient and to help stabilize the long term efficiency of an organization. Done through a variety of technology-based tools, typically this means software applications, certain processes are automated so that fewer resources are devoted to making these things happen manually.
For example, you could use BPA to send out appointment reminder emails to clients or employees. Or you could automatically have invoices generated at the end of the month, so you don’t have to do it yourself. Think about which tasks within your business take up the most time relative to the amount of effort they take. If you can find some simple tasks that take a long time to do, they are prime candidates for automation.
Seek Out Change
Finally, to ensure that your business remains efficient for a long time to come, you need to always embrace change. Even if you find ways to make things more efficient now, that doesn’t mean they will always be the best solution. Your business will grow or new software may come out that will make it so your current solutions are not the best ones.
You need to get yourself, and your business as a whole, in a mindset that embraces change. It should be a regular occurrence that you audit how your business currently operates and you look for ways to improve. Only by seeking out change and new ways to do things can you ensure that your business will remain as efficient as possible.
Don’t Let Your New Business Remain Inefficient
For your new business to grow you need to operate as efficiently as you can. Chances are the systems you started off with are not the best systems for your current business. Spend some time conducting that audit, then see which of the above strategies can improve your efficiency the most.
You don’t need to change up everything all at once – instead, focus on the biggest problem areas and address those first. Over time you will learn more about your business and your employees and be able to find more efficient systems for them. We hope this guide was able to offer you some good ideas on how to proceed and that your new business will be as efficient as possible for years to come.
