5 Ways to Make Your Business More Efficient in the Modern Age

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All businesses strive to be successful. Like a well-oiled machine, it must continue to operate consistently for both the customers and owners alike. Unfortunately, inefficiency is a common problem that interrupts the smooth workings of many large and small companies and saps them of nearly 30 percent of their revenue each year.

Fighting inefficiency in the workplace can be challenging, as it stems from various sources. From unproductive employees to ineffective policies or training, inefficiency comes in many forms. Keep reading to learn five ways to make your business more efficient in the modern age.

                   Institute the Right Technology

Whatever your business, technology is king. To be successful, you must implement the right technology, so your business runs smoothly and efficiently. For example, ERP Solutions (Enterprise Resource Planning) are customizable programs integrated into a company’s backend operations. This software takes over and automates tasks such as financial management, inventory and distribution, customer management, project accounting, and payroll management. By automating these tasks, your daily operations run more smoothly, wasting less time and increasing productivity.

                   Empower Customers

One of the easiest ways to make your business more efficient is to allow customers the ability to do as much for themselves as possible. This means giving them ways to book their own appointments, buy products from you online, and get support quickly and easily when they need it. Whether you provide all of this on your website, or take it a step further and create a mobile app they can use on a smartphone or tablet, giving your customers access to these features eliminates wasted time and frees up your employees for other tasks.

                   Encourage Open Communication

In every relationship, keeping the lines of communication open is the key to success. The same holds true for business relationships. Whether it’s employee to employee, owner to office manager, or some other combination, conveying and understanding each other helps create a more productive atmosphere.

Encourage everyone to use the quickest and easiest tools to communicate with one another. Email, Skype, Slack and other platforms work great for quick messages back and forth. It’s worth mentioning that the good, old-fashioned “face-to-face” conversation can sometimes be more efficient than any of these tech-based tools, especially if the communication ends up being more involved.

                   Stay Focused

Most people consider themselves good at multitasking. It’s one thing to be good at multitasking, but another to finish each item on time. Rather than have ten half-finished projects going at once, it’s more efficient to focus on just one project until it is complete. In this way, you’ll ensure you meet your deadlines easily, be less stressed, get more done, and feel more productive than ever before.

                   Identify What Isn’t Working

When it comes down to it, the only way you can aspire to run a more efficient business is to identify areas of inefficiency within your company. Inefficiencies can occur anywhere. From out-of-date policies to repetitive processes and hard-to-find data, almost every business struggles with finding the right combination of policy and technology that works best for them.

Avoiding inefficient practices within your company largely depends on you having a keen awareness of the business you run. Having a “there must be a better way” mentality enables you to spot any inconsistencies that could be making your business less efficient.

To be successful, businesses need to run efficiently. Lack of efficiency leads to wasted time and lost profit. Every business struggles with these challenges, but by incorporating the suggestions above, you can make your organisation run more smoothly in the modern age.

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About Dequiana Jackson

Dequiana Jackson, Founder of Inspired Marketing, Inc., helps overachieving women entrepreneurs conquer limiting beliefs and create marketing plans that grow their businesses. This includes one-on-one marketing plan development, digital product creation, web design and content marketing. Dequiana is the author of Know Your Business: How to Attract Ideal Clients & Sell More and runs the award-winning blog, Entrepreneur-Resources.net.

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