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If you want your business to be successful, you must keep it organized. This way, you and your team will keep things under control and enjoy your working environment. This task is not an easy one, but there are a few simple tricks you can use to streamline business operations.
This is how you can lower costs, use time efficiently, and keep all employees happy.
Manage time more professionally
Sometimes, the whole success of a project and the overall productivity of a team comes down to a single thing – time management. If you don’t have an efficient system in place, try some of the following techniques:
The Pomodoro Technique: This technique helps improve productivity in a very interesting manner. Employees work 25 minutes at a time followed by 5-minutes breaks. This way, their short-term focus gets better, as they know they will have a break soon.
The ABCDE Method. Do you feel overwhelmed by work and have no idea where to begin? Try out the ABCDE method, a technique that helps you prioritize tasks according to their importance. Define the steps, and you will get the job done sooner than you thought.
The old good 80/20 rule. The rule of thumb says that 20% of our efforts account for 80% of the results. To make this work for you, identify the projects or clients that require the least effort on your end, but pay the most, and use them to boost your business.
Make sure everyone is motivated
When the employees in a company are happy and motivated, these feelings transfer easily to the customers. A positive vibe in the working place also makes the company more efficient and better organized.
To keep employees motivated, let them know you are aware of their achievements, and reward them for a job well done. There are many different methods you can use to keep their morale high.
Simplify scheduling
Everything is done easier if you know when and where to do it. Therefore, by consolidating the many scheduling apps you are using into a single management system, you won’t miss a single deadline. A good way to go is to keep your professional and private appointments in a single calendar so that nothing is double-booked.
The scheduling app doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You have some affordable options for company use, such as a WordPress booking system or a service business scheduling software. Most of the times, these types of tools sync with Google Calendar making it easy for you to not miss anything.
Streamline contact with your clients and prospects
The psychological incentive of being there for customers whenever they need you is what kept many businesses on the run for years. Show clients that you care and that you appreciate their trust. Keep them updated on special offers or new products, or simply congratulate the holidays. It sounds like a no-brainer, but people do remember these things.
An even better method is to reassure customers of your knowledge and expertise by sending them educational material. Remember – this is not supposed to be a sales incentive, but rather some insight into the industry trends and market alerts. This puts you in the position of their trusted resource and brings you way ahead of the competition.
Last but not least, keep in touch on special occasions. If you remember their birthday, they will know that your business is well organized. Many tools can help you automate this process, such as MailChimp or e-Card.
Improve the workplace
Sometimes, all you need to do to lift your workforce’s spirit is to improve the office.
The working place should promote performance and happiness, be that a huge open-floor-plan office for the team or your small desk at home.
Here are some ideas on how to do this:
Get rid of clutter. Are there any items you rarely use? Toss them aside or donate them to someone. You can also recycle paperwork you no longer need, so give that document pile a look.
Enhance your archiving skills. Go for an inexpensive storage solution, such as boxes or binders. This will enable you to keep documents under control and find everything easily.
Invite nature inside. Interesting fact – office flora is known to increase productivity by at least 15%. So why not bring a couple of gorgeous plants to the office?
Eliminate unneeded costs
Here is another important statistic: on average, companies lose $1,800 per employee on unneeded emails only. At the same time, the average cost of poorly written messages within a company is more than $4,000 a year. Put in simpler words, miscommunication is expensive.
To save this money (and time!) look for more efficient ways to communicate with your employees, clients, or prospects. Purchase communication tools and apps based on informed decisions. The fewer tools you have, the cheaper and easier it will be to manage them.
Cancel the meetings you don’t need
In a well-organized business, many issues can be solved without eating up everyone’s day in meetings. Therefore, take a better look at the agenda, and detect the issues that are making everybody crazy.
Are those catch-up meetings necessary? Would you not rather have information delivered via email or a quick internet phone call?
Also, wouldn’t it be better to group client calls in a specific timeframe, so that you don’t go in and out of your deep task work? You can group and organize all your meetings in batches,
Solve all payroll issues
A motivated workforce is a very important priority for any successful business. If employees are not happy, this will reflect on their output.
A good way to keep employees motivated is to solve all payroll issues they are complaining about. Listen to them and see what you can do about it.
Streamline the process and ensure there are no delays. If possible, get an advanced, yet cost-effective payroll solution to manage the process without hassle. If you can’t identify any improvement areas, ask employees for opinions and ideas.
If possible, automate repetitive tasks
When you own a small business, your basic must-have skill is multitasking. What are the odds that you won’t get overwhelmed after a while?
Luckily, there is a simple way to prevent messy burnouts, and that is automation. If your apps don’t already have automations built in, you can use Zapier to create integrations between your apps and automate them.
With automation, you will get plenty done in a very short amount of time. As an example, you can schedule your blog or social media posts ahead of time. You can even have your email management program distribute your video meetings to all stakeholders at a time. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Facilitate onboarding for new team members
New hires need an efficient and transparent onboarding process to optimize their potential. Make them feel welcome and get them acquainted with the job as soon as possible – it won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
If you have a decentralized and diverse team, onboarding may be even more difficult. Try to develop a welcoming process that works for all new hires, regardless of where they are located.
New employees will feel valued and appreciated foremost by receiving all information they need. Make sure they are aware of all important HR matters and have a clear overview of their responsibilities.
Define your goals in advance
The thin with a successful business is, that you can never stop trying to make them better. Not that your dream came true, get more specific and define what you need and expect.
Rather than a generalized vision, set clear goals with deadlines and timeframes, and think of ways how to achieve those even sooner. We recommend you begin by setting 6-months and 1-year goals, but it won’t hurt to be even more specific.
Conclusion
Try out our express tips for a better-organized business. Along the process, you may even come up with better ideas and bring things appropriately under control.
Once your business is well-organized, you will be enabled for damage control and have quick access to all information you need. In short, you will be on top of things at any point in time and success will be guaranteed.
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