Tips For Running A More Efficient Business

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution ArticleThe less time and energy you waste on a daily basis, the more smoothly your business will run and the more you’ll get done. Run a more efficient business when you pay attention to a few aspects in particular and are proactive about making changes to how you’re currently functioning.

You’ll thank yourself down the road for the hard work you put in now to increase productivity and create a better working environment. You’ll likely be able to retain staff for a longer period of time and satisfy your clients more when you focus on this very important part of running a business.

Identify the Gaps & What Isn’t Working

You can’t improve your company if you’re unsure of what is and isn’t working as it currently stands. Take time to identify the gaps and pinpoint exactly what needs tweaking and where you’re falling short. For example, it could be that you don’t offer proper training for your employees or customers are complaining about the service and support you’re providing. Run a more efficient business when you can tackle critical initiatives and do a better job delivering on your promise.

Learn How to Delegate

It can be difficult to want to give up the control when you’re a business owner, but it’s necessary if you want to grow and develop over the years. You have to learn how to delegate and remove some responsibilities off your plate if you want to have time to focus on your business objectives. For instance, hire a company such as Tax Return to step in and take care of your taxes when the time rolls around for completing this task. Also, hire an assistant who you can count on to take care of items on your to-do list that take up a lot of time.

Define Roles & Responsibilities

When your staff is confused about what they should be doing at work each day your business will suffer. Run a more efficient business by clearly defining and communicating specific roles and responsibilities that each person is in charge of handling. Create teams and departments and assign leaders and managers to help you keep track of various projects and make sure you’re always hitting your deadlines.

Take Advantage of Technology

Refusing to get onboard with technology is only hindering your company progress and keeping you from reaching your full potential. Take advantage of the recent advancements in technology to help you bring your assignments online so you can file share and work remotely. Also, use it to allow you to test out new products and services and innovate, so you’re able to keep up with and even surpass your competition.

Conclusion

Efficiency matters a great deal when it comes to running a better business. Use these suggestions as a starting point for how you can get more done each day and keep your employees and clients happy. It’s a challenge you can overcome if you stay focused and are willing to adopt new habits for how you work.

Why You Should Consider SharePoint as a Business Technology Solution, part 2

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article
 
In the part 1 of this topic, the likes of communication, organization and information was discussed as some of the reasons every business owner should consider using SharePoint. In this article, the focus will be on the pros of using SharePoint as a business technology solution.

Four Advantages of SharePoint

Experts at Domains4less.co.nz say that SharePoint reduces costs by consolidating intranet, extranet and internet sites in a single platform – either internally or through the use of Cloud technology. Training costs can be reduced by using SharePoint to deliver training materials to teams, customers and partners via a password-protected website, accessible from anywhere. Resources, time and effort are saved with SharePoint’s collaboration and productivity capabilities, which allow companies to focus more on higher business priorities.

Useful SharePoint Tools

Often, the reason why companies are reluctant to switch to SharePoint is because they don’t imagine how they can apply it to their business to provide tangible benefits. While there are many tools associated with SharePoint, the following generally feature the most easy to understand applications for business operations:

CRM Tools

With SharePoint, companies can more easily implement a strategy to manage their company’s interactions with customers, distributors and sales prospects. The CRM tools provided by SharePoint can help with marketing efforts, customer service and even technical challenges. CRM data can be shared with customers, partners and distributors, allowing them to send requests, track status and view information. Content management features can be extended to your customers and you can create secure central documents that they can both view and edit.

Calendar

A SharePoint calendar will keep users abreast of events, meetings, deadlines, milestones, and other important dates to remember. Users remain focused and teams are more consistent when everyone is aware of notable calendar events. Customers can also stay abreast of company or product events via e-mail updates. You can even overlay a SharePoint calendar with Outlook calendars (or other SharePoint calendars) so you can filter events or view them simultaneously.

Workflow Solution

Regardless of their size or scope, all companies have workflows that dictate an activity pattern, enabled by the systematic organisation of resources, defined roles and flow of information in a tangible process that can be documented and learnt. Using SharePoint, the workflow is defined as the automated movement of documents or items via a sequence of actions or activities, related to a business process. When applying SharePoint business logic, you can attach workflows to instructions that specify and control the actions that occur in any given document or article. Subsequently, this can simplify the costs and time needed to coordinate common business processes.

Dashboard Instruments

SharePoint lets you create a project panel to help users synchronise and perform tasks. You can view and filter elements such as project details, project documents, project activities, project problems, project calendars, project milestones, lessons learnt from the project, the risks of project, and project modification orders, amongst others. Effective use of the dashboard can help you monitor business metrics, analyse the causes of any problems and improve business intelligence to aid decision making. You can customise the SharePoint panel so that essential tools for managing content and users are readily available.

Is Sharepoint Adequate For Your Business?

There are valid business reasons to use SharePoint, but it’s up to each entrepreneur to carefully analyse their business credentials and calculate the actual cost of ownership. In general, if effectively implemented, SharePoint should reduce costs, save resources and ensure accuracy, whilst delivering tangible benefits for the business, including improved productivity, better decision-making and greater innovation.

Why You Should Consider SharePoint as a Business Technology Solution, part 1

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article
 
SharePoint divides the different areas of a company and provides tools to connect them in a meaningful way. However, many businesses are cynical about Microsoft’s swiftly rising SharePoint tool. This could be because they’re not entirely sure how it can be applied to their business operations. Therefore, the goal of this article is to define SharePoint, analyse its uses and help you apply it to achieve a positive return on your investment.

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a multipurpose web application platform that makes communication, collaboration and content management more fluid and effective for many businesses. The SharePoint platform collaborates with information exchange, enterprise research implementation, business processes and business intelligence to simplify operations, increase productivity and ultimately save time and money. The three main components of SharePoint are communication, information and organisation.

Communication

SharePoint’s communication capabilities improve the way people work together, enabling teams to be aware of who did what, when and with what documents. Essentially, it helps to share and distribute information in order to improve teamwork. You could also install virtual machines, Artificial intelligence equipments, bots and the likes, but do not neglect the power of SharePoint.

Content is stored in a central repository instead of being distributed throughout the organisation; this facilitates access, allocation, control and exchange. Tasks are assigned and team members receive automatic notifications accordingly. Any upcoming events are easily available and sent to the relevant parties. Meanwhile, blogs and discussion forums provide a platform for sharing information and ideas.

Information

SharePoint allows users more control over information. Content management is more fluid and effective for companies, keeping it in a centralised and synchronised position for all members to access. Here, information is stored in a secure and private place, where it can be shared with team members, customers or assigned partners. With efficient input / output management features, users can add, edit and delete the same documents, whilst maintaining version control.

Organisation

The organisation as a whole is also improved through using SharePoint. Content can be added as a table or list, in which users can easily search for and assign tasks. By storing the content in a manageable database, it becomes much easier to access and share. Utilising the calendar tool, an event can be created and stored alongside related documents, while automatic notifications can alert interested parties about any upcoming events or document changes. Data can be accessed on mobile devices with internet access, so that all parties can have the relevant information at their fingertips, no matter where they are in the world.

In short, SharePoint is a collaborative tool that improves the way in which colleagues work together by providing tools that facilitates information flow between users and departments.

How Can A SharePoint Solution Help Your Business?

Increased Productivity

SharePoint aims to increase productivity via a range of features and tools that provide the relevant information for the right people at the right time, eliminating unnecessary activities through automated processes. Team projects are best managed using centralised workstations and workflow solutions that keep members informed about the status of activities, deadlines and milestones.

Best Decisions

The decisions made by any business consequently determine its future. Successful companies know how to gather, save and study vital trade and marketing statistics to attain efficient, tactical, strategic and active information to facilitate better decision making. SharePoint services enable organisations to quickly respond to a changing market and fast-changing business needs by easily accessing readily available information.

For example, a project panel allows users to view and filter information about the company and project, so they can get an overview of a particular business problem at their fingertips. Subsequently, accessing and distributing correct business information allows a company to make more effective decisions about its future.

Unlocked Innovation

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Innovation is a process whereby new ideas are created and applied successfully. Innovation can help businesses improve productivity, reduce costs, be more competitive, find new customers and increase profitability. A company that fails to innovate will lose market share and won’t succeed.

SharePoint is an innovation assistance tool that helps unlock creativity through discovery and information exchange. SharePoint discussion features allow users to share ideas, as well as offer experience and create customised solutions for specific needs. For example, a user can start a blog for a private company to share ideas with a team that’s visible only to those who have access.

How to Run Your Business in the Most Cost Effective Way

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Running your company in the most cost effective way possible should be your number one priority right now. If it’s not, that suggests there’s something wrong. So why is this so important? Most business owners assume that things are being run efficiently and cost effectively, but that’s often not the case at all. Making those kinds of assumptions as an entrepreneur is almost always a bad idea.

You’ll be surprised by the many ways in which your business is probably throwing money away right now. It’s something that you can’t let continue because the sooner you look into it, the sooner you’ll realise that you’re throwing away resources unnecessarily. We’re not going to look at some of the things you can do to make your business operate in a more cost effective kind of way.

Outsource Certain Minor Things

There are are some things that you simply shouldn’t waste time and money hiring people to do. For example, something like data entry is something that’s very simply and very mundane. That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to outsource certain minor issues and problems that might be present inside your business. Make them problems for someone else to deal with.

Put Stuff in the Cloud

The cloud offers you a fantastic way to save money because it’s all about switching stuff from your servers and putting them up in the cloud freely and easily. You don’t have to worry about running servers and paying for the electricity that powers all this stuff. It’s something that’s definitely worth considering and looking into if you haven’t had any experience with cloud computing and storage just yet. So it’s about time you started putting more stuff in the cloud.

Embrace Green Ideas

Running your business in a green way is one of the shortest and most obvious ways to make your business more cost effective and efficient. If you install water limits so that water can’t be wasted, you’ll save money. If you produce some of your own energy reserves, you’ll save money. And if you cut the amount of paper and cardboard you use, you’ll save money. When you go green, you save; it really is as simple as that.

Keep Modernising Your Advertising and Marketing Strategies

If you’re still persevering with advertising and marketing strategies that are well past their sell by date, you’re only going to run into disappointment sooner or later. Those strategies will produce ever diminishing results, and they’re not cheap. The modern ways of reaching people via targeted online ads and social media content is much more cost effective. So if you’re still living in the past, it’s time to drag yourself into the future.

Choose Tools and Components That Reduce Wastage

Depending on what kind of sector and industry you’re working in, there are all kinds of tools and components that can help you to make less. If you’re working in manufacturing, for example, you can use a flow meter to help keep things safe, secure and efficient. There are plenty of other examples of similar components that you can make use of in your place of work too, so this is something for you to look into.

Travel Around Less

Business travel can be really expensive, even if you’re just travelling across the city. Of course, you do still have to do a little travelling in order to run a successful business, especially if you want to go global. But you certainly can minimise the amount of travelling you’re doing by embracing conference calls and things like that. With modern tech, you don’t need to travel to discuss things with your clients, partners or suppliers, so why waste the time and resources?

Be More Careful During the Recruitment Process

Your recruitment process is something that you should definitely try to perfect as soon as possible. This is a cost effectiveness issue because it’s all about making sure you hire the right people the first time. When you hire the wrong people, it can unbalance, undermine and massively damage your business. It can set you back years, so it’s vital to get it right the first time.

Your business is going to have to operate in an efficient and cost effective way if you want it to be a major success going forward. No business succeeds if it’s wasting money on a continual basis, so it’s time to get things in order and make your business even more profitable and sustainable than it is already.

Benefits And Challenges Of Lean Manufacturing

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Lean thinking is all about doing more with less. Therefore, lean manufacturing is about reducing or eliminating waste across the board, from customer service and design to distribution and manufacturing. It is also commonly referred to as lean production. There are many benefits associated with lean manufacturing, as well as numerous challenges. Read on to discover everything you need to know.

The short-term and long-term benefits of lean manufacturing

As mentioned, lean manufacturing includes production planning, scheduling & control, and there are a number of benefits that come with readdressing these areas and eliminating waste. This includes improve employee morale, as your team members will feel empowered and like they are contributing. Moreover, lean focuses on reducing uncertainty in the workplace, which can also make employees more secure and confident in their role. Other benefits of lean management include a safer working environment, the creation of more space, and problem elimination. After all, lean manufacturing is all about forcing you to attack issues head on until they have been eliminated. Aside from this, you can expect total company involvement, as well as easier management because everyone knows what they have to do and when they have to do it. And that is not all! Other benefits you will realise include manpower reductions, increased efficiency, improved visual management, and improved quality.

Challenges you may face

As is the case with any change in business, there are going to be challenges you face along the way. Once lean manufacturing has been implemented successfully, it will all be worth it. Nevertheless, you do need to be aware of the challenges that you will come across so you can manage them effectively. The first challenge is resistance. After all, most people do not like change. They like to live in their comfort zone. This is why you need to make sure that everyone is aware of why this change is going to be implemented and how it will benefit them. Some of the other challenges you can face include initial labour increase, upkeep, and cost. This is not to say that lean manufacturing is expensive. After all, it is all about reducing waste. However, redesigning equipment and such like is going to cost money at first. Nevertheless, it is all about seeing the bigger picture and ensuring that you are going to be making cost savings overall.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding regarding the short-term and long-term benefits that are associated with lean manufacturing, as well as the challenges. Lean manufacturing is something more and more companies are embracing today, and it is not difficult to see why. However, you do need to make sure you have the correct approach.