| We all want our business to succeed. A major element to obtaining this success is to make sure your company has strong and cost efficient operations. Here are the top 10 ways to improve your company’s operations:
- Empower Your Staff: You hired them for a reason, so why not let them do their job? Micromanaging is hard, not just on you but everyone as a whole. Very few people excel in an environment when their actions are put under the microscope. In fact, mistakes become even more common and the workplace turns into a personal prison. So let up a little bit and let your staff do their job.
- . Keep Your Enemies (i.e competitors) Close: We’ve all heard the famous saying, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer”. For obvious reasons you need to know what your competitors are doing. Not so much to copy their actions but to gauge how they may be copying yours. Are they siphoning away clients because they can do the same thing you do better? More efficiently? What’s their angle to success or failure, in any event knowing this will allow you to either find success or avoid failure.
- Learn From History: When was the last time you performed a task that took twice as long to complete than originally planned. Or completed a project that didn’t quite go the way it was anticipated? Perhaps you did something exceptionally well, was the process tracked so that others within the company can capitalize on this better methodology? As we work, lessons are learned, whether it results in a better way of doing something or how not to do it. Regardless of what the learned lesson is, the key is that it is recorded and available to those within the organization who could benefit. For example, when I worked for a department within a large global company, our department rarely committed the same mistake twice and capitalized tremendously on proven ways of doing business because the senior leadership but a great deal of emphasize on a training tool I taught them called the After Action Review (AAR). The AAR, which I learned from the military, is a simple yet detailed analysis that occurs after the completion of every major event, such as a client project. In the AAR, every person involved reviews every step in the project and discusses what went right, what went wrong and how we can do it better the next time around. The entire discussion is recorded and made available to those in need throughout the organization. A document management system with a built in routing system will facilitate performing the AAR, especially if it is not possible to synchronize everyone’s busy schedule for a meeting.
- Having The Right Partners: In a highly competitive economy it is rare for a company to work in a vacuum. After all, you probably need suppliers, consultants, marketers, etc… you name it. We all need help. As a young child growing up, you more than likely had help from a parent, guardian or someone else who took you under their wing. You didn’t know it all then, and guess what… you don’t know it all now, believe it or not. Finding a business partner who has the ability to fill in the “gaps” is important for continued and steady success. I remember a few years back while working for a large global company I had the privileged opportunity to listen to a author talk about his book on “The Lessons We Can Learn From Children” (I might be a little wrong about the exact title though). One of his points was that a child’s innocence is something we as adults need to re-learn, such as the need to seek help. My 4 yr old son doesn’t hesitate to say “Daddy help me”, yet here I am closing on 40 and I sometimes find it hard to say “Help me” to someone else. Why is that? Pride? Perhaps. But what ever the reason, we all could learn a lesson from the little 4 yr old that use to exist in all of us.
- It’s Not All About The Work: Contrary to what many may think, there is way more to life than just work. This is particularly true for the small business owner trying to make a mark in the world or the progressing staffer looking to advance to the next level. But take a moment to stop and think about it. What’s really important? Personally, my priorities are my relationship with God, family and then the business. In that order.
- Not Fearing Change: Ahh this is something everyone experiences physically. We don’t move around as quickly as we use to (it really sinks in for those of us with young kids and trying to keep up with their high energy levels). Yet despite this physical degradation, most of us resiliently adapt to our changing environment. So why shouldn’t our company? How many businesses can you think of that allowed time to pass them by? For me it’s was Montgomery Ward. Growing up in the Chicago-land area, it seemed that Montgomery Ward stores were plentiful. In fact, during my senior year in high school and during semester breaks from college, I worked in the lawn-n-garden department making good money as a commissioned salesperson selling lawn mowers, tractors and snow blowers. But this storied store (dating back to the 1800’s) fell off the scene around 2001. What happen? Obviously declining sales got them, but what caused that? Many will say they were victims to more agile competitors such as Walmart and Target who were able to adapt to a changing environment faster and meet the ever-growing needs of the customer. While the Ward’s brand is still available as an online retailer, it is no where near its former-glory. The take home message is don’t let your competitors adapt to a changing environment faster than you or your business might also end up as a shell of itself.
- Have A Plan For The Unplanned: The fateful events following hurricane Katrina and 9/11 taught all of us a painful lesson. In addition to understanding the fragility of life and the need to have compassion on our fellow man (and woman of course), another take home message should have been the essential task of preparing our businesses for the unexpected. While many businesses have taken the necessary steps to protect themselves in the face of an unexpected disaster, many are failing tremendously. I’ve always wondered what happen to the scores of patient records and other documentation seemingly destroyed by these two tragic events, in particularly for the businesses that didn’t have a working disaster recovery plan. Don’t become a victim twice. It’s devastating enough to experience this type of disaster, but don’t let your physical and mental recover be victimized again because your consumed by the stresses of your business being ruin due to destroyed information. Prepare for the unexpected and prepare for it now. A good document management system that is able to safely secure your data that is stored across several information systems will go a long way in preparing your company for the unexpected.
- Obey The Law: Pretty obvious huh? I don’t mean the Enron type of activities, but rather those practices when you think you are abiding by the law, but upon a closer look you are not. With so many Federal and State regulations such as SOX, HIPAA, and others it is easy for your company to innocently find yourself in deep (well, you know what I mean). Know your industry’s governing regulations well, and if needed seek outside help for assistance.
- Strengthen Your Communication with Internal and External Customers. Arguably one of the hardest, yet seemingly easiest things to do in business is effective communication. Whether it is ensuring that a client has the proper information or are departments working efficiently together, the need for accurate communications is a must. Yet so many companies fail at this apparently easy task. The larger the organization the greater the propensity for poor communications. Granted none of us are perfect, and communication mistakes are bound to happen, however, significantly reducing them should be a major priority. A tool that takes your fragmented information kept in emails, file cabinets and personal computers and aggregates it into a secured yet easy to access repository for employees to quickly and easily disseminate information when and where it is needed will undoubtedly reduce communication errors throughout your organization
- Control Your Cost: Too often this is associated with layoffs. While this is indeed a way of controlling your cost, it is also a good way of destroying your employee’s moral. Before taking that route you should take a closer look at some of your company’s soft cost such as time lost doing everyday things like locating paper files, money spent on offsite storage facilities for paper documents, maintaining old legacy systems and the cost of printing internal or external reports. Then look at your physical layout. Are you using your office space to its fullest for revenue generating activities or do you have a growing amount of non-revenue generating areas, such as those used to maintain files. Calculate these soft costs and more than likely you’ll be surprised at the potential savings that a strong document management system will do for your company.
Ok, there you have it, the top ten ways for improving your company’s operations. Don’t let procrastination set-in and find yourself on the short end of the stick, act now to ensure your business operates to it maximum efficiently.
(About the Author: N’Gai Cobb is the Corporate Director for Future Filing, LLC, (www.FutureFiling.com) a document management system that is designed to give small to medium sized companies an organizational tool that was historically only affordable to large Fortune 500 type corporations. You can reach him at ncobb@futurefiling.com or call 1-800-291-7129 x701.)
Back
|
