Running an efficient business is a necessity if you want to get the most out of your budget and maximize your profits. When you have processes or employees who aren’t efficient, you’re using more time and resources to get tasks done than you need to. Efficiency is all about trimming the fat, making every process as quick and easy as it possibly can. While you may not always be able to get employees to work as efficiently as possible, you can bring in some tools that help improve their productivity. Here are some of the best tools out their business owners can use to make their businesses run more efficiently.
When I Work is a scheduling tool that retailers will find quite useful. It gives managers an easy to use, simple way of putting together employee work schedules. It’s web-based, so you can access your schedules from anywhere you get internet access, and you can do work from your smartphone if you need to schedule on the go. If you need someone to pick up a shift, you can send a message out to available employees asking if someone can cover it. They can reply yes or no, and the tool will automatically update the schedule when they do.
By streamlining the scheduling process, you’ll find that you’re able to much more quickly fill shifts. Your employees will know when they’re working so there won’t be as many issues of someone not showing up.
There are a lot of different video chat tools out there, but HipChat is designed especially for teams rather than one-on-one calling like a lot of these apps are. It also makes it very easy to share files, plus one person can join and participate in multiple chats at once. This means your employees can be working on several projects and jump into private or small group chats whenever they need to. Other nice features include searchable call records, the ability to share whatever is on your screen with others, and additional security features that keep all of your calls private. For those who have multiple offices, this is a must-have.
This is a great way of making sure everyone has what they need to get their work done and that everyone is on the same page. There’s no need for an employee to walk to someone else’s office or even pick up the phone. Unlike sending text messages or email, video chatting tends to take less time. It’s quick and easy to say what information you need to communicate and then get back to work.
Uberconference is the ideal conference calling tool. It lets you conduct meetings with multiple employees no matter where they are, but unlike some virtual conferencing apps, it’s not difficult or clunky. Employees don’t need any kind of password or pin to join. Anyone can quickly share their screen to show what they’re working on. You can also enjoy HD audio, so there’s never an issue with static or difficult-to-hear sounds. The call administrator can mute individuals, remove people from the call who aren’t invited, and more.
With a conferencing tool that is easy to use, you won’t spend a part of every meeting trying to get everything up and running. This will make your meetings shorter which, in turn, studies say makes everyone feel more efficient.
GenBook is an appointment-making tool aimed at helping small businesses schedule client meetings. In addition to making it easy to arrange your calendar, the tool also works with advertising. It lets you create special offers, link them to your social media pages, and track customer response and analytics to improve those ads. It makes scheduling much easier and more efficient so you can work on your advertising, social media campaigns, and running your business.
While it might not sound like a major blow to efficiency, employees do spend a good amount of time dealing with passwords. A forgotten password here or there can take a few minutes to change, especially if the employee has to call IT. That time does add up. Then there’s the security side of it, too. While a few minutes lost to reset a password may not be that bad, having your system hacked and your data stolen is going to throw all of your efficient processes out the door while you handle the situation.
Lieberman Enterprise Password Manager takes care of both of these concerns. It actually creates much stronger encrypted passwords for server profiles. When an employee needs to log in, they can enter their simple, easy-to-remember password. Lieberman uses that password to retrieve the stronger one from its database, then submits that complex password to the server. Your employees don’t need to remember all the symbols and capital letters they used in their password, but you don’t have to worry about hackers.
If you have employees who routinely work from home or have several offices that are collaborating on large projects, Bitrix24 is a great tool that will keep everyone on the same page. It allows you to create tasks, assign them to employees, review them as they’re completed, and more. Employees can chat, share documents, and add comments to projects so that everyone knows what’s going on. There’s even a calendar and the option to track how much time was spent on a task. Bitrix24 provides an efficient way for employees to come together on a project even when they’re working miles apart.
Email is great for sharing a file or two with another employee, but what if you need to share something with the entire office? If that document or file needs to be updated regularly, it means emailing it out over and over. If it’s a large file, that can be an issue. Dropbox lets you share files by simply dragging and dropping them from your computer to the Dropbox. You control who has access to each file or Dropbox folder, making it easy to share information with a few other individuals or with the entire company.
These are just a few of the different tools out there that will make your business more efficient. If you’ve noticed that some of your processes take more time than they should, one of these tools may be the perfect solution.
