As your business grows, it’s essential that you keep fine-tuning your processes to make them as efficient as possible. If you don’t do this you will find that over time your business starts to grind to a halt as clunky processes weigh it down, and the longer this goes on, the bigger a job it is to unpick and resolve. Putting in the work early to get your processes right can not only save you money, but make your employees and customers happier too!
Conflict resolution
One of the best steps you can take to ensure that everyone in your business is working happily and efficiently is to take any conflicts in the workplace seriously.
According to BizFluent, businesses lose a whopping $359 billion a year due to workplace conflict! If you have unresolved conflicts in your workplace it can impact morale, productivity and also your public image.
Check with your HR department to see if there have been any grievances filed, and ensure that these have been followed up and resolved. Take the time to speak with the individuals involved and make sure that they are happy with the resolution, too. If you have any reports of individuals who are consistently late for work or not working hard, speak with them personally and see if there are any issues at home or at work that are causing them a problem.
As you do this, see if there are any gaps in your conflict resolution processes that can be improved upon, so that in future the process runs more efficiently.
Sales and operations planning
Sales and Operations are important to all types of businesses, not just those concerned with manufacturing.
A good sales and operations process ensures that:
- All of your business departments are in communication with each other.
- Your processes are flexible enough to allow for changes as needed.
- Decision making involves all of the relevant people – otherwise, you can find that a decision in one business area has a negative knock-on effect for another. For example, if you are focusing on sales, does your fulfillment team have the resources it needs to meet increased demand?
- Forecasting is accurate so that you can plan ahead.
A good sales and operations process can be tricky to get right. It can be beneficial to get expert help with your sales and operations planning by enlisting a sales and operations planning consultant, who will have experience working with an array of different types of businesses and will be able to offer you valuable advice and guidance.
Outsourcing
If you do it right, outsourcing can actually be incredibly beneficial to your business. The way to do it is to keep your core processes on-site, but then outsource the things that aren’t your specific area of interest.
By doing this, you can focus your energy on the things that make your business great, and outsource the things that other people are better at than you. It’s a win-win!
It doesn’t matter if you work in the medical industry, or construction, there is always a way in which you can outsource to improve your business and improve efficiency! For example, if you work in a medical facility/office you may want to look at using a virtual assistant medical practice service to help with patient appointment scheduling. For those of you in the construction business, you could hire a post-construction site clean-up company to help you. All of which have huge benefits that you will feel in no time!
Automation
A lot of people are quite worried when you say the word ‘automation’ as they imagine automated processes taking jobs away from people. And in some cases, they might. However, if you do it well you can automate the processes that are time-consuming and boring for your employees, and ensure that they are trained up to do something that they are passionate about instead.
Automation is particularly valuable for dull and monotonous tasks because when humans get bored, they start to make mistakes. Machines don’t do that, so you’ll usually find that if you automate the right processes your accuracy and efficiency improve too. For example, weighing and measurement solutions Australia, or similar solutions where you are, can help to measure and weigh items and products quickly and accurately, so your employees don’t have to spend all day doing it themselves. This frees them up to do more valuable jobs that will leave them more satisfied at the end of the day.
Communication
It’s well worth investing in a communication tool for your business like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom or one of the many others out there. If your team can easily communicate with one another this not only helps them to feel more part of a team, it means that people aren’t waiting around for responses to emails before they can proceed with important work. This is particularly important if you have people working in different locations, like at home or overseas.
Veeramachineni Lalitha
I am Finance Content Writer. I write Personal Finance, banking, investment, and insurance related content for top clients including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Edelweiss, ICICI BANK and IDFC FIRST Bank. My experience details : Linkedin