As businesses grow, they become more complicated. This is a simple fact of the business world, however if you don’t keep a constant eye on them, they can become needlessly complicated and will hinder the running of the enterprise or simply fail outright. If you start trimming away the fat, you will become a more efficient and profitable enterprise. It can be difficult trying to trouble shoot where you can simplify and what you can let go of, so I decided to compile a small list of the key areas where you can probably afford to simplify.
Your Bills
There are lots of bills to be paid when you’re a business, but chances are they run pretty regular. You may have an accounts department that can focus on each one, however if you run an SME that’s too small to have a dedicated team, it would be easier to outsource to an external accountant, which will cost money, admittedly, but I will cover the benefits of outsourcing in the next couple of paragraphs.
Outsource
Outsourcing simple tasks may be more expensive than doing it yourself, however you will save so much time because the simple, boring tasks are usually the ones that are the most laborious and take up the most of your time. Pay someone to handle it for you (which shouldn’t be too expensive) and then you can concentrate on evolving your business.
HR Outsource
This is kind of a sequel to the original point above. Outsourcing is always helpful, but outsourcing your HR is a must, because it is estimated that a new entrepreneur will actually spend over 30% of their time fiddling about with payroll and simple HR administration. There’s also great HR softwares you can deploy which will help with holidays and all that extra stuff you don’t really care about.
Procedures
When you start out a new business, you will probably be handling most of the day to day functions yourself, which you will slowly start to hand to employees as your company grows. One of the best ways to make this transition easier and to ensure that they are working as efficiently as possible is to come up with semi-rigid procedures and template structures. This also makes it easier when a staff member is ill or someone needs training.
Software
There is so much software on the market that will simplify your business so that everything runs more efficiently. It could be a SAP system that helps you keep all of the data in one place or cloud computing that helps all users share an interface or work from home more easily. With SAP there are now certified companies that create similar software that works more specifically to different styles of business. An example of this would be Weavability.com that specialise in SAP ecommerce.
I find that the areas I have talked about here can often get overlooked by a CEO or entrepreneur as they focus on the more exciting or engaging aspects of their enterprise. Giving some more though to them will ensure a more streamlined running of your business. It’s not always clear when something needs to be simplified, but if you put a few hours aside at the end of every month and analyse your business, it should slowly become apparent.
