How To Speed Up Business Processes While Reducing Cost

In an era marked by outstanding technologies, business processes are more efficient than ever before. However, many traditional businesses still lag to an extent, probably because they’re yet to leverage some tools and systems available to them.

If you’re like that, don’t fret; here are some ways to speed up your business processes and save cost while at it.

1. Outsource Check Printing And Mailing Services

How often does your company pay by check? A business that writes up to 500 checks monthly may spend over $20,000 in labor, materials, and bank charges throughout a year.

In addition, your in-house team will have to divide their attention between their ideal roles and processing checks. Outsourced check writing becomes a great way to speed up your business process and minimize cost because the third-party service provider saves you the burden.

The service provider handles the entire accounts payable process from printing and writing the check to sending it to the recipient. For businesses that cannot implement digital payment systems immediately, outsourced check writing should be considered.

Recommended: 4 Methods Of Streamlining Your Small Business

You need to make sure your small business isn't dragging any dead weight to stay competitive. Here's how you can streamline your company.

Read Aricle »

2. Leverage Automation

We’re in an age of automation and remote work, where you need not be face to face with a customer to attend to them. You can create an automated system to handle quotes and orders so that clients in a different time zone can get a response without waiting hours for you to wake up.

While doing that, you’d also save money because you don’t have to pay a salesperson or customer service representative. You can get automation tools, such as customer relationship management and HR software, for less than $100 monthly.

3. Cut Operations Into Repetitive Tasks

Consistency brings repetitions. Repetitions bring fewer risks/errors. And fewer risks encourage speed. You get the drift.

One way to streamline business processes is to break up larger operations into smaller tasks. This is most applicable and beneficial to manufacturing processes. A repetitive task done by the same employee will have the same predictable outcome. This allows for speed as there is less chance for something unprecedented to occur.

A process that varies from time to time and person to person will require more time, therefore increasing the cost of quality.

4. Make The Business Easier To Manage

When processes are predictable, managers can measure progress and expect outputs without directly observing their teams. This allows managers to focus their time and energy on other aspects of the business, thus enabling the overall process to move faster.

Below are guidelines to make your business easier to manage:

• Focus on processes and tasks that are less predictable
• Prioritize tasks by steps as they lead up to the project completion
• Ensure each employee fully understands their task in line with the overall project
• Track time
• Measure progress.

5. Delegate Tasks To The Right Labor

Imagine delegating a Master’s degree holder to a simple clerical job, such as filing documents. Knowing their value, you may end up paying them more according to their value, which is more than the job is worth. If not, they wouldn’t be motivated to give their best.

Recommended: Get Moving: Study Strategies For Kinesthetic Learners

If you struggle to retain information from a lecture, or find that you can only learn if you're "fiddling" with something then you may be a Kinesthetic Learner. In this article H. Davis looks at some techniques that Kinesthetic Learners can use to aid in their studying.

Read Aricle »

Conversely, hiring and training unskilled labor to handle a professional task wouldn’t be very wise. You’d spend unnecessary time and energy during the onboarding process.

To save time and money, hire the right skills, as each employee would require only mild training since they already have what it takes. And you’d also be paying precisely what the job is worth. A win-win, and workers would stay motivated to give their best.

With the right tools, systems, and employees in place, any organization can cut costs and speed up its business processes.