Inefficiencies within a business costs money, time and energy, which is why today I am sharing the ultimate guide to guide you to improve your business efficiency. By focusing on improving the efficiency of your business you are setting yourself up to an increased profit margin, reclaiming your energy and regaining control of your time!
Within this guide I am sharing the biggest learnings I found from over 15 years researching, implementing and tweaking efficient operations within a top fortune 500 corporate and leading my successful business management agency juggling 20 team members!
Safe to say I am known as the leading ‘efficiency queen’ with my full focus on efficiency in business (and life!). Are you ready to take your business from inefficient to efficient machine? Of course you are and I am here to help you increase your business efficiency, so let’s get cracking on ways you can improve.
What is business efficiency and what types of business efficiency are there?
Starting off with an explanation of what business efficiency means before we get started because so often efficiency is confused with effectiveness. While both are vital to the success of every business, they have two big differences.
Business efficiency is the use of resources in an effective and efficient manner to achieve desired outcomes. The concept often includes the idea of maximising productivity while minimising waste to cut costs. Once applied to business, efficiency is a measure of how well a company uses it’s inputs to produce outputs.
Companies that are considered efficient will be able to produce more output with the same or fewer inputs. In other words, it takes less time, energy (aka. Effort), or money to produce the same or better results. This in turn increases profitability. There are many ways to increase efficiency in a business, ranging from process improvements to technological advancements.
While effectiveness on the other hand is all about achieving the end result, without thinking too much on how you actually get there as-longs as you get to your destination.
Here’s an example, I drive to the supermarket, and I am not bothered about the route I take as longs as I get there (effective). However, if you are driving to the supermarket but you lookup traffic beforehand to make sure you are using the most time efficient route, or if you are looking for financial efficiency, you might focus more on the route that is going to cost less in fuel…You get the picture.
Whether you’re looking at your efficiency drive based on time or financial there are ways your business can improve and maximize your business to boost efficiency.
Start with improving business process efficiency
There’s so many strategies out there, especially in this online world, where it’s really easy to just pick up and learn more and more. However, before you know it you’re drowning in these ‘magic formulas’ and finding the reality is it could not be further from magic if you tried!
But what if we just keep it simple and be okay with a handful of things that are growth orientated, and increases process efficiency. I see so many businesses with packed out processes that are in their heads. Packed out current processes on paper is tough enough. But when it is all in our heads it is no wander we feel our head is about to explode!
Which is why I always recommend starting with looking at your internal processes and develop a process map to evaluate existing processes and workflows, identifying areas of improvement, and implementing changes to make the business more efficient.
When you have a map with how things come together it is much easier to be able to see where you can save time, money, resources and (or) energy without affecting the effectiveness of the process. It also allows you to provide a better product or service to your customers. Ultimately increasing profits! Profits that fund your lifestyle.
Incorporate a business process management (BPM) tool to improve efficiency
By automating and streamlining key business processes, a BPM tool can help to eliminate bottlenecks and reduce delays for your business operations. In addition, a BPM tool can provide visibility into process performance that measures how well your business is performing, allowing for ongoing optimisation. Ultimately, using a BPM tool can help to make an organisation more efficient and effective.
It is really important to do your research here in order to choose the right tool for you. For me, it is tools like Clickup* as my go to choice because the functionality and investment point is extremely competitive in comparison to other project management software.
Seen as this is your centralised hub and task management software that runs your day to day operations it makes sense to spend some time to find the right tool for you, remembering to factor in the future too! You do not want to outgrow your tools too soon!
Review business alignment and improve your business
Is your efficient business in alignment Is your efficient business in alignment? If not, what changes do you need to make? Alignment is key to efficiency. When all the parts of your business are working together in harmony, you can achieve great things. But if there’s a disconnect somewhere, it can throw everything off. Make sure your business is running smoothly by ensuring that all the pieces are aligned.
Reviewing alignment between business goals and objectives ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal and there are no gaps or duplication of effort. Allowing you to identify any areas for realignment. This needs to be done on a regular basis, at least annually, to ensure that you’re still on track.
Time and time again I hear business owners say “But I have a task list as long as my arm”. When we come to review the tasks there are a million tasks NOT linked to their goals and therefore having no impact! Which is no surprise when the business alignment has not been regularly reviewed.
If you’re not sure where to find that disconnect, here are some signs to keep an eye out for when improving efficiency and productivity:
- You don’t have a defined mission statement or vision. The goals aren’t aligned with the rest of your business. You don’t know what your brand’s voice is and how to use it consistently across all channels. Your team isn’t on the same page with regard to your vision or goals.
- Is your marketing strategy inconsistent? If you want to ensure that your marketing strategy is working for you, it has to be consistent. You can’t just start promoting one thing, then switch to something else a couple of weeks later and expect people to keep up with you. It needs to be focused and consistent for people to understand what you’re trying to achieve and how they can help you get there.
- You’re not tracking your results. If you’re not tracking your results, you’ll never know if what you’re doing is actually working or not. Make sure you have some sort of system in place so you track your progress and see which areas need improvement. There are plenty of great marketing tools.
Take the time to reflect and increase efficiency in business
Something all of us ‘A’ types are guilty of is jumping ahead. The ideas come knocking and we spin straight into action. Whilst this can be a great trait in regards to running a business. It can also be a huge burden when it comes to operational efficiency and sustainability.
By just jumping ahead to actioning without the pre planning or prep work means you could be wasting your time, energy and money on non sustainable or growth orientated ideas! This leads to frustration all around and inefficiencies that affect business!
Streamline for ways to improve business efficiency
Having an efficient business doesn’t mean you will be able to do everything. But it does mean that you can streamline everything you do have! This saved me hours each week and allowed me to focus on other tasks that are more important to my business.
I have seen many business owners who have taken the advice of ‘hire before you are ready’. But now they outsourced all those overloaded strategies without knowing what is working and what isn’t working for their business!
Which means they have got their time back. But now it is costing money to get someone else to handle those strategies and they are getting ZERO return! Frustration kicks in. This is why as a business owner it’s crucial to get down into the trenches. To see what is working and making sure that you’re streamlining what’s not working.
But streamlining is not just about process, workflow and team. It is also about tech, offerings, business environment and so much more for maximum efficiency!
Systemising to improve your business efficiency
A bugbear of mine when people talk about systemising is that they often think that standard operating procedures (SOPs) are the be-all and end-all. SOPs are important, but they’re not the only thing that goes into making a system work well. There’s also things like process mapping, data analysis (valuable insight), tools, resources, and quality control to consider.
Without all of these pieces working together, a system can’t function properly. Overall, an effective and efficient system is one that you can see how everything comes together with minimal wastage of time, money and energy.
It’s a good idea to ensure you are spending time on maintaining the effectiveness of the system and to make sure it continues to run efficiently so it does not end up in a big mess and headache trying to figure where all the moving core elements come together.
Time management
Time management is critical for the efficiency of your business. The goal of time management is to use your time as efficiently as possible to achieve your desired outcome.
There are many ways to manage your time. But some basic tips include:
- Setting priorities
- Creating a schedule of your working day stopping those “days too long” complaints
- Focusing on best possible use of time with one task at any one time using single-tasking
- Carrying out a capacity tracking analysis against every task
- Keeping meetings short and succinct, avoiding many meetings that are not a priority of YOURS. Meetings aren’t here to waste time when organised wisely
- Preventing unnecessary interruption and staying organised
By following these tips, you can ensure that your business runs smoothly and efficiently without taking over your life!
Use technology in order to automate and improve labor productivity
The process of automating certain tasks in order to speed up or improve efficiency and still be effective is known as automation. It is used in business settings, and applied to any area where high-value repeatable tasks are carried out reducing wasted time.
Automating repetitive tasks can help to improve quality control, reduce costs, help to free up time so that users can focus on more important tasks and secure your future efficiency. Automation is used in a variety of different ways. Common examples include automating tasks such as data entry, scheduling appointments, or sending emails to save time and money.
You need to understand your business processes and operations in order to know where to start with your automating journey.
I am always looking for ways to improve my overall efficiency, and I encourage others to do the same. I hope that this has helped give you a start to redesign your business to run more efficiently and keep your business, time and resources thriving! Bye bye inefficiently run business.
If you need some guidance on your business efficiency journey or maybe you just want to skip the ‘figure it out’ stage and work with me to fast track your results, my calendar is open to chat.
*This article may contain affiliate links, but I only ever recommend tools I use myself
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