Every business should be striving to root out and eliminate inefficiency, but it is often a challenge to identify where you could be wasting time, money and resources in the first place. Being unaware of alternative ways of managing your staff and resources may well be eating into your bottom-line.
1. Identify the issues
Errors and lateness are two of the biggest problems in terms of business efficiency. Repeated work takes twice as long, and can also cost you in terms of wasted materials as well as man-hours. Staff not being in the right place at the right time, or being ill equipped, or not following the best procedures all contribute towards inefficiency.
2. Your time is money
As a business owner or manager, your main concern is the smooth operation of your organisation and planning ahead to ensure profitability and hopefully growth. If you are bogged down in tasks that do not contribute towards this end, and are simply treading-water, then you need to make sure you re-allocate your time wisely. Delegating work to staff to free you up is one option, another is automation. The right software can automate processes such as sending messages, filling out forms, allocating workers, keeping records, and more.
3. Consult with your staff
Asking your employees for feedback is a good idea, they may have perspectives on processes and organisation that you had never previously considered. There may be differences of opinion on the best courses of action, but weighing up these ideas can provide valuable insight. Look at what your most productive staff members are doing on a day to day basis and see how that can be replicated across the board.
4. Make sure your staff are spending their time effectively
If your employees are traveling around various sites to work, this can lead to problems in communication and completing tasks on schedule. You ideally want an easy way to monitor where your staff are, what they’re doing and ensuring their processes are correct. This is why a system like SwiftCase is so useful; it allocates staff to tasks based on location, availability and skill-set. Each stage of a job can be broken down and monitored in real-time, ensuring deadlines are met. Any weak-links in terms of efficiency can be identified and corrected.
5. Ensure you retain customers
What do you offer to your customers that they would struggle to find elsewhere? Leaving customers with unfinished work, missed deadlines and late starts can be disastrous for a company, particularly in a crowded marketplace. Customer service means more than just friendly relations, it means they know they can rely on you to provide quality work on time and on budget. What mechanisms do you have in place to ensure this is consistently the case?
If you’re looking for a software solution that ensures you eliminate inefficiency and retain profitability, get in touch today.