One of the biggest things that hamper many small businesses today is inefficiency in terms of simple office tasks. Everything from how documents are created to communicating with clients.
Here is an example from a recent visit I had to a local business. There were several staff members who wanted to do a relatively simple task of printing a document on a piece of letterhead. First, one person printed the document for their boss to proofread. Once the boss approved, the document went to another person for printing. The original person then went to a drawer and got a piece of letterhead and placed it in a printer. The document was then sent to the wrong printer so the letterhead had to be moved to the other printer. This entire process lasted about 5 or 6 minutes. I know, 5 minutes is not much in an 8 hour workday. But imagine this same thing repeated several times a day, 5 days a week. That is a ton of wasted time and wasted time means wasted money.
Photo from http://www.lumaxart.com
Now, improving efficiency in this scenario is very simple. First, create a letterhead template in Word that contains all of the information that is on the current letterhead. Then save that as a template and the next time you need to print a letterhead, recall the template, type your letter and print. This also saves the money that it costs to have your letterhead professionally printed.
Other ways to improve this scenario, shared or networked printers so that anyone can print to any printer. You can have the boss approve the letter electronically (when possible).
So, what little things can you do to improve your efficiency? Is your staff using technology to its fullest potential? Are there ways you can improve how you communicate with clients? Take a critical look at your operations and let me know what you find.