Today’s on-demand culture means that our clients expect ever-swifter responses to their requests and orders. Naturally, as ambitious providers of quality products and services, business owners are keen to respond positively to these demands and push their processes to the limit to achieve quicker and quicker turnovers. However, this often comes at a price.
Mistakes can be made, systems can overload and employees can become overworked, which is not only a moral failing on the part of any business owner, but it can also result in more sick days, low morale and greater staff turnover. So, how can you achieve results faster without putting unnecessary strain on your staff or causing other problems? This article contains a few ideas that may help you come up with an effective plan.
Analyze Methods and Routes
Take a look at the individual steps that are required to achieve the tasks you wish to speed up. Are there any that can be cut out, combined or expedited in any way? How are you accessing or storing certain items or materials? Can they be made easier or quicker to acquire?
You can even analyze physical routes, for example, if you have your own fleet of delivery drivers, what are you doing to make sure that they get to their destination as quickly as possible without putting themselves at risk? If you invest in fleet management services, you may be able to benefit from the use of up to the minute GPS tracking systems. You can review a guide on everything you need to know about GPS tracking devices for trucks, including location identification, route optimization and cost reduction.
Automate Certain Processes
Which employee duties can be made quicker and smoother by way of automation? We’re not just referring to fabrication processes and other manual tasks; even things like posting on social media or managing finances can be automated, saving valuable hours and enabling employees to work on other things. A great example is the implementation of chatbots on your website. These can be used to automatically respond to customer queries so that your employees don’t get tied up answering the same questions via email over and over again.
Use Templates and Other Pre-Preparation Techniques
From automatically generated emails that take their content from databases to physical formers and jigs that can be utilized in physical design and production processes, templates see a great deal of the work done for you so that the repetitive processes can be made quicker each time.
Hire More Employees
Often, the simplest way to speed up your processes is simply to get more hands-on deck. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring permanent staff members – if, for example, there is a seasonal boom, you can hire temporary or part-time workers to help manage the overflow while it lasts. Of course, if you’re regularly running behind schedule, then it may be a good idea to hire a larger team on a permanent basis. If this means you’ll be losing money despite the increase in demand, then you might want to reconsider your pricing structures or the promises you are making your clients.