As the technological developments of the fourth industrial revolution affect how we all live, work and interact with one another, a rapid change is taking place in all companies.
This is doubly true in uncertain times when companies in all industries suddenly have to switch to work styles and make their business more resilient and flexible.
It’s a good time to ask how your company can organize its key processes to deliver the best experience to both your employees and your customers.
With the optimal mix of people, processes and technology, you can adapt your company to change and put it in the best position for growth and success.
With that in mind, here are seven business organization tips to help you stay on track. We’ve also included relevant goals for each tip so you can measure your success over time.
7 organizational tips for growing companies
1. Cut off the tech flatulence.
Goal: Optimize your business tech stack to help your team get the job done most effectively.
Technology can increase the organization, productivity and collaboration of your company. However, there is such a thing as too many tools – aka Bloat tech.
When a company uses far more apps and tools than it needs, it can quickly become a problem with excessive complexity, distraction, and security concerns.
If this sounds familiar, it’s time to evaluate, trim, and tweak your company’s tech stack.
To keep your technology ecosystem under control and take advantage of cloud apps, set up consistent processes with the apps and features you need to get the job done.
Lay the foundation so employees don’t try to juggle a hundred different things at once in too many apps.
2. Build a culture that rewards focus.
Objective: Instead of expecting constant communication and collaboration from every team member at the desk, take time for each employee to focus on where they are most beneficial.
Staying organized depends on your ability to avoid distractions – which isn’t always easy in organizations with a culture of constant disruption disguised as collaboration.
Common daily time wasters include: using business tools that are too complex or poorly suited for the job; Social media distractions; and manual data entry on multiple different systems that don’t work well together.
Let’s also not forget the so-called notification fatigue that results from being bombarded with irrelevant notifications and emails on a daily basis.
Here are some of the best ways to get rid of time wasters in your business:
- Use carefully selected cloud-based tools that everyone in your company is familiar with.
- Build an integrated technology ecosystem that maximizes efficiency.
- Establish company-wide processes that minimize unnecessary business meetings.
- Encourage team members to block out distractions for set periods of time when they are focused.
The best organized companies are those that realize they don’t have to do anything just like they always have.
What processes and assumptions can you rethink to make your business more organized and productive?
3. Migrate to the cloud.
Objective: Identify business practices that are still managed through outdated systems or tools and plan how to replace them with cloud-based workflows and apps.
Almost every business uses some form of cloud technology, even if it’s just web-based email. But there is much more to the cloud than many companies realize.
Whether customer relationship management (CRM), data storage or business automation provided via the web – almost any digital workload can be migrated to the cloud.
With SaaS tools – or cloud-based apps with a subscription model – your company can escape the physical limitations of desktop computers and allow employees to take their work with them wherever they go.
Take your business further to the cloud and minimize the back and forth that comes with outdated computing environments.
4. Adopt different styles of work.
Objective: Create a plan to future-proof your business by considering different work styles, such as: B. Remote work or flexible working hours.
From agile startups to companies driven by digital transformation, many companies are already taking advantage of different work styles – including higher productivity, lower office costs and access to more diverse talent.
But even if your company is far from ready to enjoy all the benefits of remote working and flexible working hours, long-term priority will help you future-proof and adapt your business.
If you want to enable more remote working in your company, here are some tips to help make the transition as smooth as possible:
- Align your company policies with remote working best practices.
- Strengthen team communication and collaboration with cloud-based apps like Slack.
- Reduce your reliance on face-to-face meetings by introducing video calling apps.
- Customize your tech stack to focus on cloud-based apps your team can use anywhere.
5. Focus on smaller goals.
Goal: Look at company-wide, departmental, and individual goals to make sure they’re broken down into actionable steps.
It’s hard for your business to stay organized when you set yourself high goals that are both intimidating and difficult to focus on.
In each department and position, determine how your team is most likely to achieve your key goals before breaking them down into actionable next steps.
With smaller and easy-to-measure milestones, your team is in the best position to stay focused and avoid burnout and confusion.
6. Go paperless.
Objective: Identify the causes of the stacks of paper in your company and create processes to minimize them.
Paper is a common, but largely avoidable, source of clutter in many offices. If you don’t already have a digital filing system, it’s time to build one.
Here are some of the best ways to help your business go paperless:
- Attach notes and files digitally to customer records in your CRM.
- Use team apps like Google Drive to collaborate on team projects.
- Use the online signing of documents with apps like DocuSign.
The less you rely on paper, the faster your business will modernize and the easier it will be to organize your workflow.
Established businesses may have a harder time, as they often have huge amounts of information in printed documents or on physical digital media.
Start by scanning and digitizing everything and uploading it to a document management system. It’s much more organized than having to pile up piles of documents and paper receipts in the office!
7. Automate workflows.
Objective: Identify what is taking up unnecessary time in your company and determine how automated workflows can give you more time to concentrate on the essentials.
If there’s one thing that kills productivity in particular, it’s cumbersome manual processes that consume time and make workflows prone to human error.
Manually importing or exporting data between your email marketing software and CRM might not sound like a big deal at first until you realize that you have to do the same with many other apps and databases. After all, the challenges of scaling make it virtually impossible.
The Sage Council says that anything that can be automated should be automated. You could start by automating the following:
- Lead scoring for new contacts in your database
- Promotion email workflows
- Backup and synchronization routines between apps
- Customer care processes, such as B. notifying account managers of support tickets or conducting NPS surveys
- Enriching data between apps with bi-directional integration, e.g. B. between your CRM and your email platform
The goal should be to unify your technology systems and processes in a cohesive environment where everyone on your team can access accurate, up-to-date information in real time, regardless of where they physically are.
With the right tools and data, everyone on your team can stay organized without getting bogged down in repetitive manual tasks or spending hours tracking down that one key document.
When there is so much going on in your company, it is not easy to stay organized. But by streamlining your core processes and looking to the future, you can overcome the challenges of scaling and put your business in the best position to thrive in the years to come.