One of the most basic things a business needs is to run efficiently, but it seems this is something that can never be fully achieved. There is probably always room for continuous improvement, and there are multiple areas to look at in order to identify the potential for streamlining.
There are a number of ways in which your business might be running at less-than-optimal efficiency. The following are some of the core, common areas in which a large potential of businesses have room for improvement; particularly small and medium-sized businesses that can’t justify hiring specialist departments for every single area of their operations.
Operational Inefficiency
This is inefficiency in your business’ general, everyday operations. Due to the considerable differences between business in various industries, it is very difficult to pin down specifics here. Just review your processes periodically and make sure that they are not overly long or complex, and that processes that can work together or play off each other are well-integrated. Consider whether any processes would be better off outsourced. This is often the case with things like accounting, where a professional may be able to do a better job while saving you time for other aspects of your business. Lastly, avoid letting minor administrative tasks mount up. You may think it makes sense to procrastinate and then tackle them all in one big blitz, but in truth it would probably be less time-consuming to deal with them promptly before they build into a big, confused mess.
Even if no actual time saving is made, it will still most likely be less disruptive to your schedule overall if you spend a few seconds or minutes dealing with these little jobs as-and-when rather than waiting for them to become a big job that requires serious time out in one big chunk.
Marketing Inefficiency
Your business likely relies on marketing to bring in fresh custom. However, it is often quite easy to unwittingly introduce inefficiency to the marketing process and waste time and money. Inevitably, some of your marketing efforts will fall on stony ground. However, many businesses spend a lot of time and money on avenues that consistently fail to pull their weight. Look closely at your different marketing avenues and see which ones are actually bringing in customers. For online marketing, tools such as Google Analytics can help if you can get to grips with their stat-heavy interfaces. If you find it hard to figure out which aspects of your marketing campaign, consider ways to track their success such as asking customers where they heard about you or distributing different discount codes and vouchers through different marketing channels and seeing how many get used. Then , either look at ways to improve on the under performing strategies or simply scrap them to save time and money which can either be kept for your business or re purposed for the more successful channels.
