How do you ensure that your business wrings every last drop of productivity out of its potential? Ideally, businesses should ensure that its staff and equipment at its disposal are deployed to the maximum possible effect so that as much work as possible can be done in the shortest plausible amount of time.
It’s something that the UK is particularly concerned with – with British businesses lagging well behind the rest of the G7 for the output per hour worked.
But, on an individual level, how can you ensure your business is as productive as it can be? One way is to search out the latest technology and use it smartly to make your processes more efficient. Here are the areas to look out for.
Project management
If you’re handling a big project that takes a number of months to complete and involves a number of different teams, then things can quite easily get out of hand. Confusion leads to delays, and delays can lead to sluggish productivity – as well as issues with money. Search out project management software that allows you to take control of this process. You need to be able to break a project down into tasks, to allocate these to the appropriate people and to set deadlines. After this, such software will allow to monitor progress effectively – and pinpoint any parts of the project that need extra support.
Accounting software
Do you get bogged down by paperwork? It’s very easy to leave the books until they pile up and become a big problem, but there will then come a time when you can’t leave it any longer. This is not a healthy way to operate – and it doesn’t lend itself to maximum productivity. Move to accounting software to make it easy to log, update and maintain your accounts whenever is convenient for you. This will allow you to automate important reports, for example, and leave you to focus on making more money to make those accounts look rosier in the first place.
Paperwork
Speaking of which, it pays to find other ways to automate some of the laborious paperwork processes that might be necessary for your business. This can reduce the ‘human error’ factor and greatly speed up how you operate. Consider, for example, using barcode scanning software in order to speed up the inventory process if you’re managing stock levels.
Video conferencing
Businesses waste an awful lot of time on meetings. In fact, one study found that executives feel that two thirds of all meetings are unproductive – and $37 billion is wasted on these meetings. One drain on resources is the time and effort spent travelling to the meetings in the first place. That’s why businesses really need to embrace video conferencing . With better technology and more reliable internet connections, it’s now perfectly possible to conduct meetings this way without it being too much of a drain on your finances or schedule. The time and money saved can go into focusing on greater productivity.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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