Efficiency is everything when it comes to building and growing a business. It not only saves time, money, and effort, it improves results across the border. Although this blog has already touched upon how to build better business efficiency by enhancing ergonomics, communications and data entry, employee productivity, weekly goals, and qualifying clients better, there is still much more you can do to improve your company’s productivity and cost-efficiency.
Here are 4 more ways to improve efficiency in a business by leveraging the power of technology.
- Use smart mobile devices more.
If you still use old fashioned ways of communicating in an office from post-it notes to clipboards, walkie-talkies, and bulletin boards, you haven’t fully embraced the marvelous flexibility of mobile devices. Smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices help staff communicate inside the office and when they are out in the field.
Suppose, for example, a salesperson needs to make a presentation to a client at their office. Their job is to introduce your company’s latest machine and explain why it’s the perfect solution to the customer’s problem.
How are they going to describe the machine, assuming it’s not a common item?
They could do the following things:
- Try and paint a verbal picture of what the machine looks like and how it works. (Vague)
- Carry an armful of visual aids and prompts into the meeting and set up a display. (Awkward)
- Carry in a laptop, hook it up, and offer a power point presentation. (Better)
- Carry in a tablet and share graphics, videos, flow diagrams, etc. (Perfect)
In short, using today’s slimmer, more portable, more versatile technology, which is loaded to the teeth with productivity apps will increase your company’s bottom line. It will make everything easier, from interoffice communication to remote collaboration while on the road.
- Use customized software.
Perhaps, you run a specialized business that requires a lot of manual effort, manpower, and coordination. While you’ve looked for software that can help you automate some of your processes, you haven’t quite found anything that works for you. The solution to finding the perfect software is to build it from scratch. Just go on to a job board where you can find international freelancer workers and hire a developer. You can outsource to get exactly what you need for a much lower price than simply calling up a local software developer in your city. With the right software, you will then be able to automate many tedious processes that might be taking many hours of your employee’s time and slowing your business down.
- Use printed labels to make things easier to find.
Labeling things helps employees and customers find them faster. In an office, for example, when you label a shelf or cabinet, everyone knows where to look for certain files, and when you clearly label your office files, it’s easier to find the one you’re looking for. Or on the shop floor, if you label the merchandise on the racks, shelves, or other displays, it’s easier for customers to find what they need.
While, you can, of course, simply handwrite your labels, it’s much more professional to you use a QuickLabel printer. This way people don’t have to squint over unintelligible scribbles, and you can add color, nice fonts and graphics to a label to make it look much more eye-catching.
- Update your computer infrastructure.
Smart mobile devices are only a small technological upgrade you can make. You can do even more impressive things like ditch your expensive, antiquated on-premise computer infrastructure and migrate to cloud computing.
Here are 7 good reasons why migrating your business to cloud computing might just massively boost your business productivity and profits.
- 1. You will slash your capital expenses by spending far less on your operational costs. This will free up your money to spend on revenue-generating tasks like marketing and sales.
- 2. You will free up your office space by getting rid of your in-house computer infrastructure. Besides your server, you can also get rid of any supportive equipment like emergency power generators, special air-conditioning devices, backup devices, etc.
- 3. You will stop spending money on hiring IT consultants or dedicated IT employees because the cloud provider will take care of installations, upgrades, patches, and so on.
- 4. You will start using the latest applications in your business through software as a service (SaaS) which allows you to rent software that you might not be able to afford otherwise.
- 5. You will get much more data storage capacity, bandwidth, and other system resources when you need them.
- 6. You will only pay for what you use. During the slow seasons, you can drop power and functionality you don’t need; then during the busy season, you can ramp things up again.
- 7. You can scale up your business rapidly without having to buy a whole new computer infrastructure to handle your exponential growth.
If you think short-term, a technological upgrade may sound like you are shelling out more money than makes you feel comfortable. However, if you look at things from the long-term perspective, you will be cutting costs and increasing profits. Still, if you think a complete technological makeover is overwhelming, then just add one technological upgrade at a time.