Once you’ve build up your business a little, and you’ve made good habits of some of the productivity strategies in the previous article, now it’s time to start using new strategies to help your business get to the next level. At this stage in the business, there are two strategies you’ll want to incorporate: Delegation & Automation.
These will free you up to do more of the important work that you are uniquely qualified to do: vision-casting, strengthening infrastructure, empowering employees, strategizing.
Automation
Generally speaking, this is the process of finding software that can do the work for you. You might be able to find freeware or shareware at a sight like tucows.com to help you. Also check out our shareware recommendations at MoreBusiness.com/tools/download. Or, you might have to buy the software from a developer. But what software should you get?
Look at the kinds of things you do in the day and try to identify areas that you repeat over and over again. Pay attention to areas of the business you don’t like, because that’s a great first place to consider automating.
Got a hatred for accounting? You can’t just stop doing it — it’s integral to the business. Perhaps you have to find software that allows you to spend only a moment each day inputting a few numbers. The rest it pulls from current software you’re using.
Or perhaps you are a web designer, marketer or freelance writer. Often, you’ll need to find research that you used for one project, which might be applicable for another project. A personal information manager or document manager might be the kind of software you need.
Hate sending emails? Many companies use a contact manager for common contact tasks and an auto-responder for ongoing and repetitive tasks.
Delegation
Many entrepreneurs who are fairly new to the business may not consider delegation an option. Perhaps, if they are the only employee of the company, they think there’s no one to delegate to. And, at this point in the company’s growth curve, profitability is nice for the small number of employees, but it’s simply not feasible to hire new employees or to give extra work to the already over-worked employees you’ve got!
What can you do? Outsource!
Outsourcing, including freelance outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) is a growing industry that allows businesses of any size to find the right people to do the job. Now you don’t have to learn how to do book-keeping any more. Someone can do that. Now you don’t have to hang around the office anymore in case someone calls. A call center can do that. Now you don’t have to teach yourself html anymore. A freelancer can do that.
There are many sites available to help you outsource. For example, sites like www.elance.com or www.guru.com both can provide a variety of freelancers who can help you with everything from sales and marketing to web design to copywriting.
Business process outsourcing, from sites like www.wipro.com/bpo/ and csc.com/solutions/businessprocessoutsourcing can provide the small business owners with support they would normally need to hire an employee for. Human resources, accounting, and call center services are just a few examples.
Been in business for a while? It’s time to change your productivity strategy. You should still be using your time wisely, but now it’s time to start incorporating automation and delegation to your productivity plan.
