Productivity and efficiency are two totally different things but often intertwined with each other as they both amount to the same thing: to improve what you do. It’s no understatement to say they’re the holy grail of improving your business. But what exactly does it mean, and are they just buzzwords thrown around to make you feel like you aren’t running your business optimally?
Far from being buzzwords, productivity and efficiency are practical goals you need to be aiming for when it comes to running your company. Being able to be more efficient means you waste less time and fewer resources to get the job done while being productive means you are making the most of your time and resources without working yourself or your team to the bone.
But what if you already think you’re working productively or efficiently? Then you already have the basics in place to keep moving forward, but there’s no harm in making sure you’re not overlooking anything, is there?
Software
Software is instrumental for every business, and you’ve likely got some different types of software up and running now. However, when did you last check that all these ran smoothly and integrated correctly? Poorly integrated software could unintentionally make your job harder than needed by increasing the steps and processes involved in inputting or extrapolating data.
If you want to make improvements, look at your existing software and assess how well it works together. It might be that you need to replace some types of software; for example, BuildOps can help you streamline your quote process and keep all of your quotes in one place, and you can see if they have been accepted and their current status. At the same time, Slack allows for easier communication channels for all employees to save you from having to contact each other separately.
Training
If your team doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to do their job, how can you expect them to be efficient and productive throughout their working day? Everyone needs the skills and support to carry out their duties and do them well every day. Lack of training means low staff morale, poor employee cultures, subpar customer service and a drop in overall standards. And that is no way to run a business. So, if you are looking at ways to make things run that little bit smoother every day, then look at what your employees know or, more importantly, don’t know and get those gaps filled.
Outsourcing
There is a fine line between outsourcing being effective and being detrimental to your business. Outsourcing done correctly can be extremely effective and help you to do more and maximise your resources, but you need to be careful about what you outsource for the best results.
Ideally, you will want to be picky with your outsourcing and only hand over tasks that you or your employees aren’t able to complete easily, aren’t trained to do or take up too much of your time. Typically, these tasks involve marketing, SEO, web content creation and website maintenance, along with data analytics, handling, accounting and cyber security. Start small, pick one task to outsource and look at the benefit it offers you, be it better results, freeing up more time or improved standards, before outsourcing anything else.
While efficiency and productivity are different tasks, oftentimes improving one improves the others, and you get to see benefits in both areas by making small changes and starting with your worst-performing areas.
Leave a Reply