The business world has never been so competitive. With more and more start-ups arriving on the scene, it’s also making it an even more challenging environment as many of these are lean and more hungry for success.
They also have the added advantage of not being held back by engrained procedures and legacy systems. In short, they are starting with a clean sheet of paper and are free from “old” ways of doing things.
But existing businesses don’t need to worry too much. There are a number of ways that they can make themselves more streamlined and able to compete. What’s more, several of them will be invisible to clients, but will definitely have an impact on the service they receive.
Make sure your IT network’s as good as it can possibly be
It stands to reason that if your business infrastructure becomes more efficient and fit for purpose, this will have a knock-on effect on the service that you’ll be able to provide.
Therefore, investing in a solid network optimization system is something that is certain to pay dividends almost as soon as it is up and running. Choose the right one and you’ll find that it will do everything from monitoring the network to see where hold-ups and bottlenecks are occurring to identifying areas in business premises where Wi-Fi speeds are not as good as they should be. What’s more, it will produce reports automatically that would otherwise take up a member of the IT team’s day – who can then spend their day doing something else that’s valuable to your business.
Cut out non-essential internal meetings, cut down essential ones
What business can honestly say that all the meetings held internally are essential? Many could be replaced by an exchange of emails, saving huge amounts of time. Even essential ones can drag on far longer than they need to. There are plenty of ways to minimize meeting time – something that will benefit everyone.
Introduce more efficiency into your warehouse
If your business provides goods to customers from a central warehouse, or even from a number of locations, then you need to focus on increasing efficiency in this pivotal part of your operations.
By making sure that orders can be fulfilled as quickly and efficiently as possible, this will benefit the business in a number of ways from increasing customer satisfaction to ensuring that you’re not carrying too much stock at any one moment. It can even be an integral aid in helping your business to adhere to the Just In Time principle.
If there is a budget available to invest in robotic automation then this would be ideal – just look at how streamlined it has made operations at Amazon. A less expensive option is to use a geo-location system so your human employees can be guided straight to when the products they need are being stored.
Introduce just one of these initiatives and you’ll see a difference. Introduce them all and you may be stunned by the results.
