All organizations have chaos. How much chaos depends on the leaders’ tolerance for higher costs, lower profit, and wasted time. There's a reason large corporations have staff dedicated to improving operations. They know the importance of setting up effective processes and procedures to help with employee turnover, cost efficiencies, eliminating time inefficiencies, managing growth, etc.
No matter your business size, there are some basics that all companies should follow to streamline and improve efficiency:
1. Keep your data clean. Customer and partner lists should be up to date and correct. If you need to outsource work or to communicate to customers quickly, you need to be able to reach them. A great way to do this is to get your customers and partners to give you the correct information themselves, either via an online form (Google forms are free and can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet) or old school with a signup sheet. Store this information in a central database to easily access it for future communication needs.
2. Standardize how you do things. Organizations that rely on temporary or contractor work need to get them up to speed quickly. Document how roles and tasks are done, that way it’s easy to communicate and these things are handled the same way every time, no matter who is doing it. Also, getting contractors up to speed and to work quickly gives them a feeling of being part of the team and satisfaction when the work is successfully completed. Happy workers = return workers, and they’ll be more efficient in the future.
3. If your company hosts an annual event, document how this event is run. Whether it’s an anniversary sale or customer appreciation event, disorganization and chaos will add cost to your bottom line. Creating a timeline from start to finish (brainstorming the “theme” to cleaning up afterward), including details for the day of, will ensure your event runs smoothly. It’s even more valuable if the organizer of this event changes annually, giving them a blueprint and reducing costly time delays and pointless meetings.
4. Standardize your communication. Creating templates for email or other correspondence will save time and enable you to reach multiple recipients with minimal effort. These communications can be customized via online tools such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. Don’t forget about email templates in Outlook and Google – they save time by having standard communication at your fingertips with a few mouse clicks. How many times have you written the same email asking for help or thanking people?
5. What is your process when you acquire a new customer? Do they quickly get brought up to speed? How do you keep them up to date with what’s going on with your business? How are they kept informed about your progress with their work? Creating a repeatable process for bringing new customers into your community will keep them engaged and interested in the future.
Creating standard processes ensures you are delivering the same quality product and/or service to your customers every time. Contact us today learn more https://beckinsights.com/take-action
