Our team works with companies to find inefficiencies and flaws in their systems which waste both time and money. As our clients discover these issues and correct them, they find that they were losing out on potential revenue, hindering company growth, and even driving away customers.
There is no reason to lose revenue and spend hundreds or even thousands of hours spinning your wheels. Here are five places where your business is likely losing revenue, right now.
Five Common Drains on Your Time and Money
It is vital that you keep your business on the right track through this changing business climate. Below are five common ways that you are losing time and money - along with a quick primer on how to correct these issues:
1. No or undocumented processes and procedures
Our clients are always invited to examine the potential revenue that they have lost due to inadequate existing systems. The question we ask is, “Which part of your business would see the greatest ROI from well-documented processes and procedures?”
Usually, the answer is the sales department or a production department.
When we tackle the defined area, our team always finds inefficiencies or significant inconsistencies that result in lost clients, missed sales opportunities, or defects in the product. These issues are often entirely resolved with efficient and well-laid-out processes and procedures.
Companies that have defined and easy-to-use systems can provide a better product and service to their customers. Additionally, these systems can be set up to catch any customer falling by the wayside, recovering clients that you may have believed lost.
2. Wasted training when someone leaves your company
Knowledge transfer systems are vital in every company, yet they are often lacking. This means that all of the time and energy you have put into your employees is lost when they leave or retire. This is essentially wasted money because you have to retrain a new person from scratch - and they, in turn, have to develop their own processes and procedures based on their professional experience at other companies.
This creates turbulence within your business each time an employee moves on to another company - and it makes your own retirement from the company very difficult as you become the main repository for company knowledge.
The answer to this problem is simple: create a knowledge transfer system. The critical elements for any sound knowledge transfer system are:
- Make it accessible
- Make it consistent so it is searchable
- Ensure there is a formal process in place
- Instill its upkeep as a habit
- Take time to review the system and ensure it is functioning correctly
3. Failing to review processes and procedures periodically
As times change, your processes may need to expand or change. Every business must review their processes and procedures on a biannual basis to ensure that contingencies are accounted for and new processes are implemented.
4. Constantly putting out fires instead of creating and implementing strategies
Many executives share that they do not have time to plan because they are always putting out fires in various departments. Unfortunately, when no plan or strategy is in place, overworking the leadership team becomes the strategy.
This is an ideal time to define which department could benefit most immediately from processes and procedures - then implementing them. It takes time and energy to get organizational work done, but it takes far more time, energy, and money to deal with chaos every single day.
5. Underutilizing technologies
Many companies turn to technology for organizational help, which can be effective. The problem comes when no one in the business is fully trained a product’s functionality - and the way your company uses this tech is not documented.
Often, we find that a business owner or executive will purchase some technology with robust functionality, but the employees will only use one piece of it. Then some other software is purchased which overlaps with existing systems, and so on.
It is vital to ensure your employees are trained on the technology you have purchased, and that at least one person in your company understands its full functionality. It is also vital that applicable staff create the processes and procedures for your company, and provide suggestions for ways that the tech you have already paid for is fully utilized.
You may be amazed at how little functionality your business is utilizing in tech you have already purchased.
Are you ready to create an efficient company? Contact Business Success Consulting Group today!
