Time is a crucial resource in the business world. Everybody knows the motto, time is money, but if you are going to move your business forward, you need to focus on your time management and investment. Indeed, wasting time affects your productivity, your revenue, and your growth rate. Building a successful platform for your business to expand and reach out to new markets begins with managing the ROI of your time. You can’t afford to waste time in areas that are not going to deliver a positive return or a return that grows proportionally to the time you dedicate to it. Ultimately, the reason why time is money is that you need to spend it in the best possible way to profit your business growth. As a consequence, it’s essential to identify the areas where you need to stop investing time:
#1. Choosing manual over automation
Automation can be a touchy subject for small companies that are worried about job loss or loss of personalization. In essence, automating menial tasks, such as invoice payment is designed to save your team more time to focus on other activities. It’s important to understand that choosing to automate some of your business processes is the opportunity to develop your company further. The more your automate little things, you more you can work on the big things that make a difference!
#2. Scheduling your team
Are spreadsheets the best way to schedule your team? The answer is no; however, it remains a favorite in small businesses. The fear that team managers can lose personal preferences and strategic advantages when using a software tool is unfounded. Nowadays, you can find helpful crew scheduling app solutions that can create a real-time experience and adjust to the needs of your crew and your business. Additionally, it’s fair to say that using a tool doesn’t mean you entrust all the decisions to a robot. On the contrary, scheduling solutions give you the right amount of choice without wasting precious hours getting your team together.
#3. A personal answer wastes your time
Your customers or potential buyers have questions. They want to know if you deliver to their area, where their order is, or how to get help with their products. Customer call centers can help to connect to your audience, but they can get overwhelmed by generic queries. You need a FAQ page that
tackles the most common questions and guide your visitors. Ultimately, FAQs ensure your customer service team can focus on more pressing matters.
#4. Too proud to outsource?
For small companies that are proud of managing their entire work process, the idea of outsourcing can feel like cheating. Additionally, many teams worry that entrusting an outsider could affect the quality of the production. In truth, outsourcing is about seeking an expert for a specific task, such as outsourcing your tax management to an accountant or your online marketing campaign to a PPC consultant. Outsourcing is about finding the best person for the job, whether they are part of your team or not.
You don’t need to do everything in your business to build growth. On the contrary, knowing when to rely on time-saving solutions and experts to move forward is precisely what successful companies do.
