Maybe you’re lagging behind your competitors. Maybe you’re thinking of opening a new branch or going international, but your sales figures can’t justify it yet. Here are just a few ways to boost efficiency around the office as the first step towards bigger and better things.
Get Digital
There are a number of digital solutions for productivity issues around the office. The most basic are apps and websites that can track your finances, manage your schedules and organize your spreadsheets. The more advanced include software programs that can automate timekeeping or speed up product ordering. The more time that you save on menial activities, the more time that you’ll have to focus on your favorite projects.
Use Enterprise Resource Software
If you’ve never heard of enterprise resource planning (ERP) programs, they can be extremely helpful for the busy business. This is because they let you handle a lot of your day-to-day tasks on the same dashboard. For example, instead of having to connect to separate databases to take care of inventory, human resources, and customer account issues, ERP software can be used to streamline all of them on the same platform. Some ERP solutions, like the ones offered by Maximum Computer Systems, even let you do things in the cloud.
Incentivize Your Employees
If you aren’t the only one with a procrastination problem, some incentives can go a long way towards re-focusing your employees. Maybe you can offer them a reward if they generate a certain number of leads or meet a particular sales goal. Maybe you can host cross-department contests to see which employees are capable of rating the highest in customer satisfaction surveys.
If your employees are more involved with operational tasks, you might want to put certain teams head to head in a competition to see which teams can perform the most tasks within a certain time limit. This will be beneficial in that it will foster team unity and increase the rate at which people perform.
Of course, you don’t want to burn out your employees by going overboard and having a competition like this every single day. Perhaps having a competition like this every Friday would be best. This would help the employees who struggle with being motivated on Friday to get into a working groove as well. However, the details of the competitions themselves don’t really matter as long as you’re creating a lively, engaged and competitive atmosphere.
Ask the Experts
Sometimes, an outside perspective can be the most honest. If you’re struggling to increase productivity with limited results, it might be time to call in the professional fixers. Not only can they evaluate your business and figure out what’s wrong, but they can also offer goals, solutions, training modules and software programs to fix it. Consider taking something like an IBM services tour to see for yourself how their teams can benefit your company.
These are a few simple ways to boost efficiency at work. Whether you’re hoping to make sweeping changes or just small policy tweaks here and there, use these suggestions to create the kind of focus, a driven workplace that really gets things done.
