5 Ways to Increase Business Productivity in 2016

What would 1% more productivity across your entire company for every day in 2016 mean for your business? If you could bill 1% more each day, what would your revenue look like? The following are simple tips to make sure that this year is not only the year of productivity, but profitability as well:

1. Business Continuity: This includes the conversation about warranties we talked about earlier this month. Making sure you have the necessary precautions so you can decrease downtime. The less downtime you have, the more productive you and your business will be. Simple as that.
2. Backup Disaster Recovery: Just like Business Continuity, you want to ensure that you are not losing productivity when something happens. Having a continuous automated backup of all your data will guarantee that if something goes down, you are able to get the latest versions of all your files back quickly.
3. Leveraging technology and tools that help your business become more efficient. Having an outside person come in to audit your business and your technology is a great idea. They can help you see what areas you might not be taking full advantage of and give advice on how to get the most out of your technology and tools.
4. Automate things that can be automated. In this day and age, almost everything can be automated, therefore increasing your time to focus on your customers and things that matter.

For example: Expense Reports. How much time do your employees spend filling out expense reports, getting approvals, fumbling around with receipts etc. There are tools that will use your mobile device as a capture device, pulls the receipt into a software, and then you can track, submit and get approvals on all expenses. If you make things easy and efficient around your office, your employees will be happier, and will be more productive.

• Outline expectations clearly. If your customers know exactly what to expect from you, then there will be less back and forth about things they are unclear of. If they understand exactly what it is you are charging for, exactly what you are doing and why, then they are more likely to trust you and let you do your job. This helps productivity as well as profitability. It prevents you from having to fix something that the customer thought was already included, wasting your time and money.

If you can implement these tips in 2016, I guarantee, that you will increase the productivity in your business.  Tune in next week to see how you can make your employees happier AND more productive.