Business Efficiency in Small Business

Thought you might be interested in an article Business Efficiency in Small Business and thought I’d share a few points with you here. I’ve found some relevant information here so if I find more, I’ll be sure to pass it on.

Increased efficiency has a variety of potential benefits, including; reducing costs, improving capacity, mitigating risk and of course, driving greater profitability. Operational efficiency is also not just for big business, as is completely scaleabe. So for the small to medium business realm, here are a handful of practical operational efficiency tips which can provide great value.

Relevant Information Flow

Quality business decisions rely on good information. Many businesses know the information that they really need, but many simply don’t have the processes or systems in place to capture it quickly and easily. Invest in good systems and/or software to capture this, as when used correctly, the benefit will outweigh the cost.

Employee Efficiency

Often 20-50% of business expense will be employee cost, so its a massive expense. However a few % points of improvement can also make a massive difference to the bottom line. Consider basic data capture to start assessing employees on performance - number of billable hours, number of sales, number of "widgets” completed per hour etc. This is not a new concept, but many of the smaller businesses have no measurement in place at all. Without the measurements, it is difficult to drive incremental improvement.

Concentrate on Travel

The time and resources spent "travelling" can be extreme, so pay attention to; 1. the amount of travel in your business, 2. the cost of travel and 3. the pattern of travel. Each of these points can yield efficiency, by either better planning (especially the case with air travel), a better method of travel (or perhaps using virtual options with no travel), or by improving the sequence or order of travel.

If you want to keep reading with any of that content, by all means, click here. Please feel free to contact me on (0467) 749 378 or email at [email protected] for any thoughts and perspectives.

Thanks,

Robert