In order for your business to truly succeed, you need to increase productivity in the workplace by prioritizing the most important tasks and cutting out the minutiae that can slow down your operations. In other words, you need to optimize your company workflow to make the most out of your staff.
If you are experiencing a slowdown in your organization, then you need to make a change as soon as possible. Luckily, modern technology can help work flexibility. Your business needs to embrace flexibility and tackle more of the common issues that many companies experience in their workflow. Some of the newest tech innovations can help bring your business to the next level.
Understanding Workflow Issues
If you notice that your corporate workflow could use some help, then you first need to take a step back and look at potential issues that could be occurring. Then, you can use tech to fix them. You can begin by identifying any bottlenecks that can hamper productivity. Potential bottlenecks may include lengthy approval times, excessive multitasking, or backlogged work that is bogging down the system. The first step is to look at how you can reduce that slow-down time, or no number of new hires will remedy the situation.
The other important step is to keep track of the time spent on every task that is completed during the overall project. You can literally have your employees track how long it takes to complete each task and report back. Then take the average. Note if there are some employees that are slower, and identify whether or not there is a learning curve for some of them that can be fixed through training. You can even use meeting-room software to connect your strongest teachers with the learners that need them most, scheduling one-on-one time to upskill them in whatever space is available.
The good news is that you can catch potential bottlenecks, truly track the time needed to complete tasks, and keep an eye on every step of the process with technology in the form of project management software. By using a program like Monday, Asana, or ClickUp, management can get a bird’s eye view of exactly who is responsible for what tasks and the turnaround time for completion. Then, use the findings to simplify the workflow or cut unnecessary tasks.
Consider Artificial Intelligence (AI)
While you may feel like you need to hire more people in order to complete every task, doing so can be costly. If an employee doesn’t work out or calls it quits, then you are also wasting valuable time and slowing down your workflow even more. Instead, put technology to work with machine learning and AI.
Although it seems like a strategy from the future, you can use AI to streamline many processes within your company from automating hiring to assisting with customer service tasks. This could cut a lot of unnecessary time out of your workflow. If you are not yet ready to go that deep, then at least use AI to take on some of the more repetitive tasks that don’t need to be completed by humans. For example, you can use AI to schedule meetings, transfer customers to the correct extensions, and maintain schedules and budgets.
Artificial intelligence also has other perks that can help your organization to avoid side issues that could impede productivity. For instance, AI eliminates the human error that can so often put your projects a few steps back. Surprisingly, AI is also essential for cybersecurity, predicting risk and warning the user if your systems are vulnerable to a data breach that could set the company back days or weeks. While your teams will still need to be educated on current threats, AI can fill in the gaps so you can focus on your work.
Outsourcing the Work
If you are using the tech suggestions above but you still feel lag in your company workflow, then it may be time to consider outsourcing your work to other organizations. It may seem daunting at first, but there are many benefits to business-process outsourcing. For instance, outsourcing is generally less expensive than hiring more in-house employees. Also, since many of the tasks you may outsource are less complicated, you may see better quality. External workers have more time to do them, and internal workers have more time to spend on more complex tasks. Plus, you can find specialists in that particular field to ensure that the work is done right.
Of course, the option is not without its drawbacks. For starters, you are essentially handing off your internal processes to an outside source and they may not have the same security standards as your organization. Do your research ahead of time to make sure your data is protected. Also, it is sometimes hard to let go and let a third party take control of your work.
Of course, you could also meet these workers halfway and treat them as hybrid employees, the same way many offices are opening their doors to remote solutions after the pandemic. With the right solutions, outsourced workers can be trusted to rely on many of the same automated hybrid workplace procedures those returning to the office are leaning on. This will allow you to allocate talent when and where you need it, regardless of geographic distribution.
There are several steps that you will want to take when outsourcing a task. First, you will want to provide a clear process for how the task should be completed in a written training document. Then, you will want to appoint someone within your organization to manage the process or at least check in to ensure that everything is going smoothly. Provide the outsource team with feedback throughout the process to ensure top quality.
As you can see, there are many ways that you can optimize your workflow with smart planning and modern tech. Consider these options for your process management, and you could see increased productivity and higher earnings.
