Most businesses don’t have the luxury to waste resources. With business leaders facing continued economic uncertainty due to inflation and a tight job market, they need to find ways to make every minute and every dollar count. Productivity plays a key role in the profitability, competitiveness, and long-term success of a company. This means that identifying inefficiencies and maximizing productivity is not only a good idea; it’s often essential to the overall success of your business.
While the benefits of increased productivity are wide-ranging, from lowering operational costs to improving customer service, many businesses may struggle with how to improve productivity without sacrificing quality. Safeguard can help business leaders learn how to use their resources in the most advantageous way, eliminating waste, promoting continuous improvement, increasing profit, and providing better customer service. With an extensive breadth of services and products, as well as specific expertise in your industry, your Safeguard Advisor can help you meet your time, productivity, and business needs.
How is business productivity defined?
A measure of economic efficiency, business productivity is commonly defined as a ratio between output volume and input volume. In this way, business productivity indicates how effectively companies convert inputs, such as labor and capital, into outputs, such as goods or services. Depending on what a company produces, business productivity is commonly calculated by measuring the number of units produced or net sales relative to employee labor hours.
Increase Productivity by Eliminating Waste
Cutting out anything that doesn’t add value is a key component for eliminating waste and helping businesses do more with less. Nearly every business has areas where they are wasting resources, with time, labor, and materials all at risk for being wasted or not being used as efficiently as possible. Some of the most common areas for waste are transport, inventory, delays, overproduction, product defects, and labor.
- Transport: The unnecessary movement of raw materials, works in progress, or finished goods can all contribute to unnecessary waste.
- Inventory: Too much inventory that hasn’t sold is a heavy burden on your cash flow. Obsolete or overlooked inventory can build up, taking up valuable space.
- Delays: Delays can occur due to a variety of circumstances, from a machine needing to be shut down while waiting for repair or an employee having to wait for something to process before they can take the next step in the process.
- Overproduction: Making excess product sinks valuable time and energy into producing something the customer hasn’t bought.
- Product defects: Often the most costly type of waste, defects could require work to be redone and the loss of the original work.
- Labor: Not using employees’ talents effectively is not only a waste of their abilities, but it could hold a company back when it comes to innovation. Companies also want to be careful not to overwork employees, as this can put them at risk of being less productive. Instead, business leaders want to ensure that their labor is well-used.
Increase Productivity by Streamlining Processes
Inefficient workflow processes can easily lead to inconsistencies, delays, bottlenecks, and mistakes. Improving these processes begins by analyzing the overall workflow, identifying any problems areas, and then eliminating those weak spots. Starting at the top, workflow processes need to be created and implemented, looking at every tool and work instruction, to create the greatest efficiency and productivity. Streamlined processes lead to a reduction in delays, inventory, and rework.
One highly effective way to streamline workflow processes is through automation. Employees often spend valuable time completing tasks that could be automated, tasks such as payroll and invoicing, which could be spent on more engaging and profitable activities. Automation saves time, reduces errors, and improves consistency by simplifying tasks that otherwise would need to be done manually.
Increase Productivity by Outsourcing
With opportunities for cost savings, better access to the latest trends, innovations, best practices, and improved productivity, there are many compelling reasons to outsource some of your tasks. With a finite amount of time and resources, businesses must consider where to put their focus, what tasks will move the business forward, and what tasks would be more productive if they were handled by someone else.
Rather than spending time and effort on tasks that aren’t core business-building activities, tasks like marketing, payroll, and accounting, you can outsource these tasks and, in doing so, free up your in-house employees to focus on areas that will bring growth and improve customer experience. Outsourcing allows you to pursue new opportunities and achieve maximum productivity.
At Safeguard, we know that improved productivity is not a one-time project, as there are always new goals to set and more improvements to make. Your Safeguard advisor will work with you to identify the products and services that will make managing and marketing your business easier and more productive. Call 855.778.3124 to get started.
Key Takeaways
- Productivity plays a key role in the profitability, competitiveness, and long-term success of a company.
- Every business has areas where they are wasting time, labor, materials, or other resources.
- Inefficient workflow processes can lead to inconsistencies, delays, bottlenecks, and mistakes.
- Outsourcing allows you to pursue new opportunities and achieve maximum productivity.
- Your Safeguard Advisor can help you meet your time, productivity, and business needs.