Improve Your Productivity as a Small Business Owner

As a small business owner, you have a lot of your plate. Pile on budget problems, dealing with a small staff, and a lack of other resources and successful small business owners are basically miracle workers. Productivity is an area where many small businesses struggle. There are multiple techniques to increase efficiency.“Work faster!” isn’t one of them.

Productivity advice often focuses on staff only, but as a hands-on lead, your productivity matters, too. If you’re just starting out with your small business, or if you could use some reminders to refresh your own habits, here are a few key areas to focus on that can give you a boost.

Adopt an ERP System:

Enterprise resource planning systems like those made by Sage are customizable software packages that allow the integration of your operations, departments, or teams. Modern systems operate in the cloud for easily accessible data collection and utilization, reporting, sales, inventory, accounting, human resources, and other tasks.

They can help increase your efficiency, plus that of your staff, while lowering costs by speeding processes up, allowing quick and easy access from anywhere, and locating inefficiencies. The system is also easy to use with the help of expert consultants who can assist with onboarding and ongoing support. You can learn more at IWI Consulting Group for a prime example of how Sage Business Partners can help.

Prioritize:

Prioritizing can be difficult to figure out and it will take time to get it right. There will be some obvious to-dos that have a natural chronological order: they must be done first to complete the rest. But other tasks are not so clear. Over time, try to ascertain what regular tasks are best to do first and always make them a priority.

If an emergency pops up, then you can set things aside. However, what is an actual emergency that needs to be dealt with ASAP and what is simply a surprise occurrence that can be slipped into an appropriate time on your calendar later that day is also necessary to assess?

Delegate:

You might not have a huge staff but assigning the right tasks to the right people is crucial for efficiency. It can be hard to let go of the helm on every.last.thing. as a small business owner, but trust in your staff. You hired them based on their skills and experience, and they can handle it. Engage at the point of training and demonstrating tasks to ensure proper protocols and guidelines are being followed and then step back.

Practice Singletasking:

Multitasking is always a must-have quality for job candidates, but studies show trying to juggle multiple things at once, and only completing little bits and pieces here and there, is obviously inefficient. You perform each thing more slowly when having to constantly switch gears. So, focus on completing one task at a time to get each one done right. If you find yourself needing to multitask, this really means you must prioritize and delegate better.

Give Yourself a Break:

Your staff is legally required to take breaks for a reason. You should be taking them, too. Trying to shove too much into one day is only going to lead to a substandard job on all tasks. This will end up slowing down productivity in the long run when repeated revisions need to be made.

Take adequate breaks throughout the day to stay on top – or at least in one of the upper tiers – of your game! Don’t think of it as wasted time – think of it as giving a well-oiled machine a moment to recharge.

Read Also:

• Employee Perk Ideas to Boost Satisfaction and Productivity
• Inside Information – 5 Things Every Small Business Owner Should Know