As your small business grows, you may find it a challenge to keep up with increasing demand while continuing to provide excellent service to your customers. One way you can survive and adapt to the changes is through organization.
Here are some improvements you can make to keep your small business productive and profitable:
Upgrade
Small businesses do not often have the resources to acquire the latest developments in technology. Those are only available to big corporations. However, you should consider making investments that will provide you with countless benefits long-term.
The Cloud is one tool that can significantly help your day-to-day operations. You can use Google Drive and Dropbox, for example, to share and store files and data to your team seamlessly. No physical papers involved. Because it happens online, every action is immediate. Meanwhile, ServiceNow Portfolio Management will help you track progress and allocate resources in real-time.
Some of these tools are readily available for free online. Others cost a few dollars, but they are worth it if they can help your team accomplish more during the day.
Another piece of technology that you should make the most of are digital assistants. Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri can be instructed to do menial tasks such as dialing a phone number, scheduling meetings, taking notes, making purchases, and gathering information off of the internet. All these can be achieved through verbal commands, freeing your hands to do more important work.
Declutter the Office and Your Inbox
There are still traditional offices that use a lot of paper. If you have yet to digitize your files, now is the right time to do so.
Going paperless has a lot of benefits. It frees up physical spaces, keeps your files safe, makes your files easier to share and edit if needed, and allows you to access files immediately from wherever you are.
Start scanning the necessary documents that you have lying around and go for online invoicing.
It would also be smart to start clearing your inbox. Letting your unopened e-mails pile up will only stress you out. Worse, you may miss an important e-mail from a client or a coworker.
If you use Gmail, consider utilizing the Priority Inbox. The system will identify which of the dozens of e-mails you receive every day are important and urgent based on the sender and the subject line.
You can also set up filters for e-mails that you receive that are not that relevant to work. For example, voucher codes for online shops or invitation to parties. You will still see them, but they will go straight to a dedicated folder that you can check later on when you are no longer swamped with work.
Plan in Advance
If you are running a social media campaign, you can start plotting your posts in the morning and schedule them to go out during different times of the day. You do not have to pause whatever task you are currently doing to remember to log into the company Facebook or Twitter to publish a new status update or photo/video. There are apps that will post on your behalf depending on what time you prefer. Hootsuite, for example, will help you manage all your social media platforms.
You can do the same with e-mails. Boomerang is a plug-in that allows you to schedule an e-mail to be sent at whatever time you prefer, resend an e-mail back to you when you need to see it, or return an e-mail you sent if you have not received a reply after a certain amount of time.
Organization is an important trait to cultivate even if your business is still new. It will save you time, energy, and resources by streamlining your current processes. It will also prevent disasters later on.
