Getting Ahead: 5 Ways to Make Your Business More Efficient

I’m all about building your business by having a team around that allows you to grow. Where most business owners run into problems is when they get stuck in the process. But there is good news, business owners can always improve their workflow and systems! Through very careful evaluation, a business intelligence certification and some business acumen,  businesses can run more efficiently. Here are five ways to streamline your company for better profit margins and happier employees.

Make Customer Interactions Easy

Whatever can be done to make your customers’ experiences easier and faster should be done. Customers should be able to intuitively understand what they need to do and how to get what they want. When customer interactions are made to be easy from the beginning, business flows more smoothly. I can’t stress this enough!

How to achieve easy customer interactions depends upon your business. However, you can be sure that secret shoppers posing as customers will provide your company with great findings about problems and employee shortcomings. Here are some additional tips on improving customer experience: many business blogs offer insights and articles for business owners.

Become a Specialist

Businesses today are in a hot competition with one another because of the shortened spending of a recession-time economy. In order to keep your company in demand you need to specialize. Whatever you are selling, whether it’s a product or a service, it needs to be highly specialized and incredibly special.

Consider your company from an outsider’s perspective: what goods or services does it offer that are worth driving across town, logging onto a computer, or picking up a phone? Things that your company offers that others do not should be advertised beyond any typical item.

Support Employee Needs

In this age of school shootings and inter-office fist fights, employees are craving security and safety. Provide them with these essentials before you consider their email systems and phone lines. Most importantly knowing that conflict will occur regardless of functional your business, and having access to help with access with an issues that arise.

The next step is to ensure that systems are up and running, employees can easily access files, and your company has an edge to offer customers. Train your employees so that they feel confident. Trust them to be loyal and encourage them to develop a long-lasting relationship with the company.

Plan for Seamless Technology

Systems need to be updated. Computers will need to be replaced. IT personnel go on vacation. In spite of all of your business obstacles, you should have a plan in place for seamless technology. Plan in advance for days when your system will be down, and let the employees know about it.

Ask for employee opinions before updating your Idatix workflow automation or Google Docs to an open source system. Seamless technology means never leaving an employee hanging. When you make informed decisions with employee understanding, your business will become more efficient.

Empower Employees to Work While Traveling

Today employees are constantly on the go. People rely upon their smartphones to get work done, and they often need to work on demand from Tokyo or Tibet. Make sure your team is ready for travel by setting up a network and keeping it running smoothly.

When you plan for an efficient business your company will get ahead. By specializing in a service or product and preparing your team to win, you will find your profits increasing and your company becoming more stable.

10 Comments

  1. I’ve seen small business that haven’t utilized the correct software and technology and they definitely ended up paying for it. This is definitely a place I would invest in if I was a small biz owner.

  2. As DC said, I think investing in the growth of the business is the real key as I have seen too many small business owners who were too frugal to even invest in improving certain aspects of their business, something which they realized was a costly mistake later on.

  3. To keep pace in an increasingly competitive world, your business needs to run as efficiently as possible.

  4. I like the last one a lot. Customers are important and they should be valued really well. But if you are taking go care of your employees, if they are satisfied with their work, they’ll make way to make your customers happy as well.

  5. Software that allows people to be more efficient is vital to keeping costs low, employees happy and maximizing productivity. The hard part is finding software that fits a company’s needs. If software doesn’t come with a 30 day free trial I don’t even bother. I want to test drive it before I use it. I feel in love with Aweber’s email system because of how easy it is to use. After 30 days I was hooked and haven’t looked at another platform since.

  6. Small businesses seem to always be in the I need but don’t have money for it stage. You have to be willing to invest in somethings even if the pay off is down the road.

  7. These are very good points especially the first one. Customers are the one keeping a business alive so it is best that they are well attended and listened with their concerns.

  8. Its really interesting article on ways to improve business efficiency. Just read a whitepaper on adoption of next generation technology for business growth..)

  9. Great post. I try to be as efficient as possible in both my 9 to 5 job and with my freelance work because being non efficient is like being unorganized…it’s chaos.

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