Time and effort can help you to obtain almost anything you want, but nothing in the world can guarantee you more time. Effective time management in business can help you to achieve success. Often brands devalue time, not regarding it as a valuable resource and consequently, it doesn't get the priority it deserves. Instead, the focus is on productivity and profitability. Adjusting your mindset and focussing on achieving extra efficiency in your day can have a positive impact on your operational processes.
By conducting an audit of your typical working day to assess where you could be spending your time more efficiently, precious time can be reinvested and used more effectively.
It has been estimated that in roughly 60 per cent of occupations, up to a third of an operational process associated with a specific job could be automated. Automation offers an inexpensive alternative to employing staff to carry out repetitive, routine tasks which are unrewarding and not a good use of employees' time. Boring, repetitive tasks which leave you feeling unmotivated can be automated and mechanised, giving your employees more inspiring and rewarding opportunities and projects leading to them feeling more fulfilled. By improving productivity and reducing costs for businesses, automation is also a great way to eliminate human error, streamline approvals and sign-offs, conduct confirmation requests, give status updates and ensure that a myriad of other routine tasks are carried out efficiently.
Not all tasks are suited to automation. There are two critical questions you must ask yourself about your brand. Firstly, is this process of necessity repetitive and does it lend itself to automation? Is its repetitive nature so mundane that it is actually dehumanising and demotivating? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it may be worth considering automation. This approach will save your business time and money and is an opportunity to create rewarding jobs in your company with staff who feel fulfilled.
Once you have mapped out the tasks that require automation, you can identify the new operational processes which will be required. Try to imagine a visual representation of how your task will be completed through the use of automation. Here at Method, we use the inbound marketing and sales platform HubSpot and the cloud-based collaboration and project management tool ClickUp to build and integrate our processes. These tools create a virtual office space and whiteboard for organising ideas and publishing projects. These project management platforms help facilitate automation, assisting brands to get more done.
Now that you have mapped out your operational systems, testing it will demonstrate what works and what doesn't. Hold regular team meetings to discuss how your new automated processes are working, whether they save time and if they make schedules less time consuming and more productive with constituent tasks completed with greater accuracy.
Another time-saving technique that maximises efficiency is the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle. Developed by Vilfredo Pareto this concept suggests that 20 per cent of all business activities account for 80 per cent of your result. The 80/20 rule dictates that around 20 per cent of operational activities are responsible for the ultimate success of an enterprise. You may ask, how does this translate into our working lives? If you have established that 20% of your processes result in 80% of your success, it's critical to focus on and grow that 20% margin. Schedule the most results-driven tasks earlier in the day. According to the Pareto Principle, the first 20% of your time and effort brings in 80% of the results. The second 20% brings in another 10% of the results, and the third 20% results in 3%. As this continues, the percentage of productive results you achieve decreases.
Do you need any more reasons to help you feel inspired and inclined to protect your most precious resource, time? Method's in house podcast hosted by CEO James, entitled ‘Behind The Madness’, regularly delivers bite-size episodes of information-dense chat centred around maximising productivity, creativity and positivity. Focusing on time as a commodity that should be treasured as highly as profits, Method's team brainstorm innovative techniques for achieving success organically. So check out the series now and don't forget to leave us feedback!
