It’s Quite a Hike
Why fight an uphill battle when you can simply walk around the hill? You’ve probably put the “busy” in “business” and are wondering how to work smarter, not harder. We’ve gathered some ideas to make your life easier, and we’re focusing on how to improve business processes on a daily basis. Let’s start with prioritizing what needs improvement most.
How to Improve Business Processes – the First Step
The most troublesome business procedures are the ones that:
- Frustrate both customers and employees
- Need to be duplicated due to failure of proper implementation
- Increase costs for your company or depletes resources
- Take excessive time compared to actual profit
Since your first step towards a healthier business is to identify the need for change, choose the process your company uses that fits most of the above descriptions.
To discover how to improve business processes, you’ll first need to understand why you’re doing it. What’s wrong with what you’re doing now? Why does it cause a speed bump? Which steps are employees and customers tripping over?
Road Map It
Map out exactly what steps you’ll take on what date, and for what reason. Drawing out a plan helps you visually see how to improve business processes and heightens your passion to do so. Technology will be your best friend during this stage. Set up recurring billing for your customers instead of sending out invoices to each one on the first of every month. This could eliminate time for employees setting reminders for it, and obviously, the time it takes to actually do so.
Your road map might include the date you will launch a tool to accept payments via your website, or an automatic email notification system that could replace any daily phone call.
Enjoy The View
While on your journey, be sure the note how each change is helping or hurting you. Is this new procedure costing you more money? Are your employees happy with it? Have there been customer complaints? Is it freeing up more time? This way, you can make minor alterations while staying on the path of how to improve business processes.
Online Payment Processing
To do this, you’ll need a merchant account. Merchant accounts are essentially bank accounts for businesses that allow the acceptance of card payments. Once obtained, an online payment processing merchant account can save you hours of time per week while growing your business for the at-home buyer. If you’d like to take a look at a processor that knows how to improve business processes, check out our FEATURES.
