Success is business is not all about intricate plans and killer marketing strategies. Sometimes it is about efficiency and productivity and ensuring you’re getting the most out of your existing investments. If you are a small business owner, the need to focus on efficiency is even greater. You can’t afford to have any of your core assets – from cash and human power to premises and machinery – yielding less than their maximum ROI. It can significantly hurt your bottom line and undercut your other growth efforts. Read for ways to reduce inefficiency and ensure you get value for your money.
1. Brace up for system breakdowns
Whether you run a land-based establishment or all or part of your business is based online, you most probably have digital systems at the core of your operations. These systems can improve your productivity, but their failure can temporarily cripple the company and set you back a fortune.
To ensure your systems are always running, invest in quality hardware and software. Also, consider building a relationship with a reliable IT consulting agency to assist with fixes when the chips are down.
2. Outsource non-core services
Employees and independent contractors are apples and oranges from the business’s perspective. Employees require insurance and benefits and must be paid at the end of the month whether or not they did any work during the month. This can lower the department’s return on investment and slow your growth. With independent contractors hired on an ad hoc basis, the business only forks out money when they need services. What’s more, the business administration gets to focus on other more important activities, which, in itself, is a way to boost productivity.
3. Invest in a website
The internet has played its part in creating a level playing for businesses of all sizes, at least from a sales and marketing standpoint. Apart from creating a robust marketing strategy, your role is to build a website to fill up some of the stages in your sales funnel. A website is a must-have tool for businesses striving to unify their operations and have a place for prospects from various traffic sources, including social media and third-party blogs, to land.
4. Set realistic goals
Vague goals yield vague results, and knowing the limit of your workforce ensures your expectations are realistic. From the beginning, let each of your employees know what is achievable, what is expected of them, what their responsibilities are, and the order of priorities. By doing this, it becomes easier to motivate them and get the best out of their performances in various phases of your projects.
5. Utilize task management software
A technology strategy should be at the top of your priority list when creating a business plan. Contemporary technologies are designed to simplify work and unify operations, which not only enhances productivity, but also helps you save on labor costs.
One piece of technology that every business ought to have in their checklist is a task management system. Task management software, as the name suggests, is meant to help you manage tasks and follow-ups. In a crowded office, it can assist with task and project load-in, setting due dates, organizing tasks by priority, and adding notes, just to name a few.
6. Develop a marketing funnel
Today’s marketing is data-based. Business owners and marketers collect data about their customers and use it to create user personas for easier target marketing. Sales and marketing funnels have been used for years to track down customers from their point of origin to the company’s sales page. Creating one helps you monitor the performance of individual elements of your marketing strategy and identify the ones that are doing well and the ones that are not. You can then use the findings to scrap some or improve the underperforming elements and invest more in the high performing elements.
A well-structured marketing funnel can also help you identify and patch up leaks in various stages along your sales pipeline. For example, if you tend to lose a lot of your customers on a specific landing page, it means the page is either broken or confusing and needs fixing.
7. Train your workforce
Regardless of someone’s academic background and experience, there is always room for improvement in whatever they do. Training will equip employees with new skill sets and help them maneuver tasks with much more ease. This increases their efficiency and output.
Endnote
Increasing business efficiency is often easier said than done. You have to look at specific aspects of your operations to identify weaknesses. Next, you will have to figure out solutions that won’t take a toll on other aspects of your business. Hopefully, the above tips help you go about this with ease and expedite your company’s growth.