If you are like many entrepreneurs, you throw everything you have into your work. While hard work is integral to a startup’s success, trying to manage all work related activities and sitting on too many chairs is not only exhausting, but it is also an inefficient way to grow a company.
As an entrepreneur, the best thing you can do is manage your time and that of your team, so you are working in the most efficient and productive manner possible.
To help you, we look at how startups can streamline business processes and work more efficiently.
Analyze Your Processes
Before you can streamline anything, you want to know what’s working and what’s not.
Spend a few days looking over your business to identify inefficient processes. Once you can identify the problems, you are in a better position to solve them.
As you go through your startup, look at the workflows. Check each department and talk to your managers. Don’t forget to look at your own processes for areas in which you might improve your efficiency.
Take these steps:
- Write down the process.
- Put a purpose to the process. If there is no purpose, this is a clear indicator it’s not efficient.
- Make a list of the people on your team who play a part in the process.
Put Them in Order
Now that you’ve identified your processes, and there are likely to be a lot of them, put them in order of importance.
This can be difficult and time-consuming so enlist the help of your managerial team. They might see something as important that you wouldn’t categorize as such or vice versa. It’s good to talk through these processes because your efficiency depends on it.
It’s also important to talk to the people involved in the process as well. Get their feedback and see what they think about each processes’ efficiency.
You’ll find that some processes should be deleted, some overhauled and some that just need a bit of tweaking.
Look to Automation and Outsourcing
Automation is the wave of the future. You don’t want to get left behind, so you want to look to automation to help you streamline your workflow.
For example, instead of sending emails as a way for your marketing team to collaborate, consider a tool like Slack.
By using cloud-based software like Slack, your team communication is unified in one place. This makes your work flow much better and more efficiently.
In addition, you might look to outsourcing tasks as well. This can take the extraneous workload off your staff members, so they can concentrate on their own workflow and core tasks.
When it comes to automation and outsourcing, there are many different options. Here are a few areas where you can automate your business processes.
- Online Workspaces – this allows for better collaboration and task management between team members.
- Communication
- Accounting – this is one area where it almost certainly makes sense to outsource.
- Onboarding and Human Resources – consider outsourcing your training, ongoing education and HR needs. This takes something very time-consuming and labor intensive off your plate.
- Productivity – you’ll find many tools online to track and monitor various avenues of your business like sales, inventory, hours worked (time clocks) and more.
- Employee scheduling – this is another area where you can streamline your business processes. Online cloud-based software can handle all your shift scheduling in one place that’s accessible by your staff no matter where they are.
Final Thoughts
The entire process of evaluating your business processes should be ongoing. Schedule into your yearly calendar. No process or workflow is without improvement, so it pays to revisit these on a yearly or bi-annual basis.
Things change at a rapid pace at most startups, so you may want to look at your processes more often. This can help determine your company culture as one that is always looking to improve and make things work more efficiently.
The best way to streamline your business processes is to use the steps and then test them again down the road to make sure the new processes are working as efficiently as you’d hoped.
Are you a new startup ready to succeed? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your HR duties, finances, payroll and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.
