Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – The days of paper trails, overcrowded filing cabinets, and endless forms should be over once and for all. However, many businesses still process personnel data, purchase orders, and other routine paperwork by hand.
Focusing on the things that matter by identifying and removing manual processes and bottlenecks in your business’ workflows is of great benefit to your employees’ productivity. That’s why we will go through various tactics and methods that will help you with productivity.
Work on product documentation
Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – One of your first steps toward better overall productivity needs to involve product documentation. Creating high-quality product documentation can assist you in increasing customer success, reducing support costs, and generally improving your organization.
The most important advantage of developing product documentation is that it helps your customers. Higher conversion rates, lower churn rates, and so on are all benefits of this.
Customers who can’t figure out how to acquire value from your product aren’t likely to stick around for long. Product documentation can also help your human support channels by reducing the amount of work they have to complete.
If your product documentation is poor or non-existent, your consumers will have to contact your human support personnel every time they have a problem. As a result, you’ll spend more time responding to support queries.
To handle these responses, you’ll either need to take time away from building your business or hire a professional support person (which costs money). Customers will be able to solve many of their own problems with high-quality documentation, eliminating the need for them to contact assistance.
Use managed print services
Print suppliers offer managed print services to help you manage your printing equipment, such as scanners, fax machines, and copiers.
There are many benefits of managed print services that should be enough to make you at least consider using them. They help businesses increase their efficiency, productivity, and information security by tracking consumption, changing consumables, and meeting their printing requirements.
It can be aggravating to see how much time your staff spend on printer-related activities. The act of printing, scanning, copying, or faxing documents using outdated hardware or software is only the beginning. Instead of wasting time, you can use managed print services. Another way to increase productivity and make use of your time is to invest in technologies that offer online faxing services.
Moreover, the printing requirements of various divisions within a company can differ. The MPS provider should be able to offer a personalized program for these departments after an initial assessment of the organization’s present and future needs.
Printing from mobile devices or off-site, for example, or the need to print specific document sizes and formats that you use frequently are examples of this. This will also help you improve productivity across your business.
Improve your logistics operations
Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – The importance of timing in logistics cannot be overstated. If your logistics workflow is disrupted, you risk missing delivery slots and losing clients. Workflow automation solutions reduce the amount of time spent on manual operations and paperwork in logistics.
It’s difficult to keep track of shipments to stores or customers. It takes a lot of talent to try to combine local shipments together or plan a delivery for maximum efficiency, especially if you’re trying to work it all out in a spreadsheet.
Typos are less likely with a digital system that can auto-populate customer or store addresses. When you add in the ability to automate approval workflows and accept digital signatures, your logistics processes become significantly more efficient.
This is what you need to aim at if you want to optimize your workflow and improve productivity at the office.
Try to eliminate manual data entry
Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – Manual data entry is not only time-consuming, but it also raises the chance of human error, which can result in delays, backlogs, and even operational errors.
While data entry isn’t always completely eliminated because original data sources are occasionally manually entered, for example, in a form or survey, it’s usually redundant to manually enter data that has already been sourced elsewhere.
To reduce the need for manual intervention, data utilized in a workflow should come straight from the source, and system integrations should automatically disseminate this information.
As a result, in addition to third-party platform connections, automation systems should be able to seamlessly communicate and sync with databases, data lakes, and other data sources.
Identify decision-makers
Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – Giving too many individuals decision-making authority might disrupt the smooth operation of your business. With a lot of decision-makers, your project is likely to get bogged down in acquiring permissions and permission from everyone who matters.
As a result, deadlines are missed and work is late.
Clearly identify the essential decision-makers in the process to ensure that it works smoothly. Ensure that the number of decision-makers isn’t greater than is required and that there are no unnecessary conflicts among the decision-makers.
Your workflow will become more streamlined and efficient once you have clearly assigned decision-making authority to concerned individuals.
Conclusion
Workflow optimization tips to improve your productivity – Most of your projects are guided by your workflow, which is how you schedule tasks, assign resources and stay on track with project deadlines. This is an area that you need to optimize if you want better productivity and consequently more growth for your business.
Take what you can from this mini-guide and do your best to implement these methods properly at the office. You will feel the positive effects in no time.
Ingrid Maldine is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Ingrid’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Ingrid has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Ingrid has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
