Maximise your productivity Tips and tricks for business owners

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1 Maximise your productivity Tips and tricks for business owners Maximising productivity is vital for everyone, especially business owners. If you implement just some of the tips in this document you will be well on your way to saving time every day and get more real work done!

2 Harness your staff s potential and your own! Understand that your time is valuable Don t waste time trying to puzzle out how to do things if you could hire an expert. Your time is valuable. While you could struggle for weeks trying to figure out how to set up a new website on a content management system, you could outsource the task to a web developer and spend your time on growing revenue. The increased revenue that a new website will yield will most likely cover the expense. Calculate how much an hour of your time is worth to your business and then use a timer to see how much it costs your business for you to carry out each task. If you re spending too long on something, it will probably be more cost efficient for you to outsource that task or bring someone in- house. For example: if you re trying to grow revenue via Google Adwords and you find you re not getting anywhere, bringing in a digital marketing specialist may be a better use of resources. If you find a good one, they ll pay for themselves and more via their insights & techniques. Give your employees consistent and reliable access to information and files/data Are your servers always going down, resulting in time spent without access to s, the internet, databases and shared folders containing company or customer information? If this is a frequent occurrence and your employees are unable to work because of it, an easy way to claw back lost time would be to call some experts to plan and implement a new and reliable system for you. The short- term cost will be worth it in the long run as the hours of work saved continue to build up over time. Find out what your team is good at and assign relevant tasks Hold one to one meetings with your employees and ask them what skills they would like to use more in their work, and see how this fits with the tasks that you could delegate out. Perhaps you have someone in the team who is a skilled writer. If so, you could delegate creation of content for company materials such as brochures, handbooks and guides. Minimise distractions Maximise output Social media sites can be a real distraction for your staff. Taking 26,500 as an average salary, and the average of three days per year spent checking social media sites at work (according to a study reported by The Telegraph), businesses are losing 305 in wage costs per employee to social media sites, not to mention the lost working time.

3 Did you know that an IT Support Partner could quickly and easily tell you how much time your employees spend on Facebook? We re not suggesting you establish an autocratic rule within your organisation and outlaw social media completely. However, with a weekly report, you could identify chief offenders and figure out a way to tackle the issue.modernise Motivate Incentivise The answer to increased productivity isn t longer working hours and slave driving. It s getting your employees to work more effectively and efficiently. Using archaic IT systems puts an immediate speed bump on the road to productivity, and it is also demotivating to employees when the technology they use is outdated and slow. With the right tech, it becomes easier to offer employees the option to take up flexible working hours, or to work from home. These benefits allow employees to work effectively outside the office, but also raise morale and increase motivation levels when in the office, leading to greater productivity. Invest in IT to drive business growth Ensure your IT is helping not hindering your productivity Technology can either boost productivity or stand in its way. Do you spend twenty minutes every day waiting while your client downloads messages from the server at a snail s pace? Do you need to wait fifteen minutes for your computer to boot up before it will respond? Think about how much IT is involved with your daily tasks. If it is slowing you down at all, you should consider upgrading your systems on the advice of an IT support company. Even if it only saved you 10 minutes a day, that equates to around 5 and a half days a year of additional time. Ensure faster, easier access to your business applications Can you access your business s on any device? What about your business applications? Can you access them from home, or do you have to be in the office? If you need to be in the office to do everything, then it becomes difficult to be productive on days where personal and business appointments are interspersed throughout the day. There are a variety of IT solutions available, such as Microsoft Office 365, which enable you to work from home or on the go around your appointments. Take advantage of productivity tools A simple piece of software can make all the difference to your productivity. For example, implementing Microsoft Outlook and Lync across your organisation will speed up the process of arranging meetings with shared calendars, improve task management, and streamline communication between employees. Adding SharePoint and OneDrive adds further productivity and collaborative benefits.

4 Use remote meeting and conferencing tools to cut down on traveling time Have you ever journeyed into the office for a meeting during a busy day and had to cut other work short? If you had the right technology, you could join the meeting remotely from home, be able to see and hear the other attendees clearly (and they you), and even share your screen or presentation (or see someone else s!) If you had this technology, you wouldn t need to spend time travelling to and from the office, and you could be productive in that time instead. Streamline customer communications You probably use a CRM system to record all information about clients/customers, including their order details, contact details, and a record of tasks/actions carried out relating to that customer. It is possible to integrate your CRM system with your phone system so that a pop up appears on screen when the customer calls, with important information such as open orders, complaints, special information etc. The call can also be recorded in the CRM system. Upgrade your operating systems Still running Windows XP on your desktops and Windows 2003 servers? Despite the fact this is now a big security risk, it also means you are running slow and aging machines that do not allow your employees to work as productively as possible. These older operating systems also will not be supported if you want to move your organisations files and servers to the cloud in order to improve access for your staff, and your business continuity. Upgrading your operating systems to support modern work styles can provide a big productivity boost, and brings your technology in line with modern standards. Utilise Smart Phones in your business Smart Phones enable your employees to stay in touch with the office, easily check, manage and respond to work s, have access to their tasks and calendars on the go, and even have access to their business files and applications via solutions such as Microsoft Office 365. Your devices can all easily be managed using mobile device management software that your IT support partner will roll out to the devices. Monitor your IT Support Provider How long does it take to get hold of your IT support? If it takes them more than ten minutes to start working on problems when you or your employees can t work, then you should switch to a faster provider. Your IT support partner should also meet regularly with you and devise technology plans that include suitable technology solutions that help you to achieve your business goals, within your budget.

5 Time & Task Management Break your day into productive chunks. Focus on one task at a time Focusing on one task at a time and getting into a rhythm is good for your productivity, as opposed to starting and stopping different tasks all the time. Bouncing from task to task does not allow you to devote the time to each task that it deserves. You ll improve the quality of your work if you focus on one task at a time, and the volume of work will be less likely to overwhelm you. Plan your day, or your week, by writing down a realistic number of tasks that you can complete. Order it by priority, then work your way down the list, completing each task. Don t move on to the next task until the previous one is complete. Do everything in batches. If you need to post on your business social media pages, use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. This way you could spend an hour or two once a week scheduling all the posts for the rest of the week, then you don t have to worry about it again. The same goes for sending marketing s. You should have these all set up to happen automatically, with your customers in various workflows, tools such as HubSpot can aid with automation. If it works for your industry and client base where possible don t answer every as it comes in. Let the s build up, then process them in batches. Close your client and only open it to process s three or four times a day. 9am, 12pm, 3pm, and 5pm could work for you. Prioritise and delegate List tasks by whether they are daily, weekly, monthly quarterly or annual tasks. Put in order of priority starting with the tasks vital to your business, down to the things that would be nice to do but don t usually get done. Annotate next to each task how well you are able to complete them. For example, you can write quick and easy, must be done by me, difficult, time consuming, etc. You now have a list of tasks which are vital to your business, including ones that you are most capable of completing, and others that could be delegated or removed from the list. See the bigger picture Change is inevitable in business. Businesses must embrace change, and adapt to external forces in order to stay competitive and continue innovating. When possible, you should be initiating change in order to stay ahead of your competition, not struggling to keep up with changing conditions. Look ahead to the future and think about what changes you might need to make in your organisation. When you get drawn into detail oriented tasks and tactics, it is important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, what are your overall business objectives, does your strategy need tweaking to get ahead of the competition? Perhaps schedule an off site meeting to brainstorm with your colleagues.