Starting a small business can be hard. There are lots of things to think about, including how to run your business as efficiently as possible. In order to get your business off the ground and keep costs as low as possible, try using some of these helpful hints and technology tools to save money and continue to move forward.
Make the Most of Your Time
The more time you can save, the more money you can save as well. Optimizing productivity can help you save as much money as possible, as it lowers the amount of money you spend conducting business. The more time you or your employees waste, the more money you waste. Think about tools that will minimize the amount of time you waste as well as limiting your access to people who might waste your time. There are several applications you might find helpful for maximizing your time, depending on your business type and the number of people you have working for you.
Apps such as Focus Booster or Rescue Time can help you or your employees stay on task during the day. In addition, there are several applications such as Paymo and Toggl that help you keep track of how much time your employees are spending on a particular project. This can also help you keep track of billable hours, and the number of minutes a project may take one person or your whole team. In addition, if you are doing collaborative projects, apps such as Asana and ProofHub allow employees to collaborate together on projects, as well as keep track of which employee is doing what task. Employees can also message each other to ask questions or get feedback. While you can give employees your expectations for the amount of time you think it will take them to finish a task or activity, you can also make those expectations more fun for your employees. Offer them incentives for meeting their target or exceeding it, which rewards them for staying on task.
Harness Virtual Reality
Anytime you can operate in a virtual format, you should. Virtual meetings, for example, minimize the amount of time wasted on face to face meetings, as it is easier to begin on time, end on time, and minimize distractions. Cloud based phone systems, such as Dialpad, allow meetings to be conducted efficiently. In addition, some of these phone systems are able to record and transcribe meeting notes into the cloud so your employees can look back if they need to. While you wouldn’t want to totally eliminate face to face meetings, because they help bond your staff, you don’t have to have them every week. Cloud based phone systems also allow phone calls to be sent directly to the person’s email who can best handle the problem if they are busy or out of the office, which helps with efficiency.
In addition, rather than wasting time running documents from office to office, making copies and sending things through the mail, why not try document sharing sites, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft Office 360. One of these programs allows nearly everything to be shared with the people who need to see it.
You may also want to consider making a private page for your employees on social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter that allows your employees to share their successes and frustrations, as well as personal photos of their families or their lives outside work. This may not only work to help your team feel more bonded, it may also cut down on the amount of time wasted sharing stuff from person to person.
Make the Most of Your Employees
In every office, there are those employees who simply get things done faster than other employees. Why not give those employees more responsibilities and work on training them to take more of a leadership role, as these people may be your most valuable asset going forward. For example, if you have an employee who is a wiz and spreadsheets, why not have them train someone else who is new to the company and not a spreadsheet guru?
Speaking of training, there is nothing wrong with cross-training employees to do other jobs as well as their own. Going back for a moment to the employee who is really good with spreadsheets, consider having them train on other aspects of accounting or payroll software, since numbers seem to be their forte. If you have an employee who is amazing at Photoshop, and can create works of art for your marketing concepts, have them train on other design programs such as Canva. In this way, you are helping your employees gain new skills they can use, and you are gaining more employees who can do more jobs than they could when you hired them.
Finally, work towards an assessment of each employee’s skills and experience, so that you can make sure you are assigning tasks to the employee with the most skills and experience in that area. For example, while you have someone who is a whiz at those spreadsheets, they may not be so great at handling customer service problems, so give those to your employee who is great with people. Don’t use your best salesperson for spreadsheets, if selling your product is their best talent. The more you are able to put your best people forward, the more time and money you will be able to save.
Running a small business is hard work in itself, and it takes a lot of patience for people to be able to run a business efficiently. However, if you start out on the path towards efficiency with a plan in mind, it is easier. Start by critically looking at your business. Where can you save money? Where do you need to cut costs most? How can your employees help you minimize expenses? What technology can you use to help you with your employees, time management and communication? By thinking about your business, and the areas where you may need to cut corners, and making plans, you are well on your way to running a more cost-efficient enterprise.
