Making your small business as productive as possible can give you the edge over competitors and help you compete with larger brands, yet actually achieving improvements in this area does not happen by accident; you need to be proactive and equip your organization with the right tools to succeed.
To that end, here are just a few of the most impactful solutions and strategies for increasing productivity in a small business setting.
1. Merging PDF Files Online
From invoicing and contracts to press releases and product info sheets, you probably use PDF files for all sorts of purposes in your organization already.
What you might not know is that you can actually harness this type of document more effectively if you use online tools like PDF Simpli to merge and combine PDF files. This is convenient for storage and transfer, as well as for the purposes of presenting information in an appealing and efficient way.
2. Enabling Employee Communication & Collaboration
The better connected your employees are to one another, the easier they will find it to collaborate on critical projects which should take your business to the next level.
To do this, you need platforms that are built for communication between teams, of which Slack is probably the best known and arguably the most capable.
Likewise you should aim to go a step further by facilitating the sharing of documents and collaboration on files through the use of cloud-based services. Google Docs is the most accessible of the bunch, as well as offering a huge suite of collaborative capabilities that are free of charge in their basic form, so should be high on the agenda for adoption if you own a small business.
3. Embracing Schedules to Reach Your Goals
Small business owners are especially susceptible to allowing the overwhelming number of tasks for which they are responsible to get on top of them, and ultimately lead them to focus their efforts on aspects of stewarding their organization that are not really worth prioritizing.
This is where the use of a more rigid approach to scheduling, task management and project orchestration comes into play, in combination with the setting of targets that are actually realistic and achievable.
Once again, the use of the right software can help in this respect, with project management solutions like monday.com and Asana providing in-depth capabilities for taking charge of even relatively complex initiatives. Meanwhile the use of free scheduling tools like Google Calendar can revolutionize the way you tackle the tasks on your plate each day, and will prevent you from feeling intimidated by all that you have to get done.
4. Outsourcing to Freelancers
When you need something done, you do not necessarily have to rely on your permanent employees or even on your own hard work to complete the task that is in front of you. Sometimes it is far more efficient and cost-effective to outsource certain duties to qualified third parties, especially if you have a deadline looming.
The help of freelancers and contractors can streamline your operations and boost your productivity when it matters most, so look to online platforms like Dormzi in order to connect with freelancers who you can hire on a short-term basis for everything from SEO and graphic design to recruitment and database administration.
Most of all, remember that when aiming for productivity improvements, you should use a range of tools and tactics as a small business owner, and try out different methods to see which ones deliver the best results for you.