A recent survey by Vanson Bourne found that 74% of small businesses embraced BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to work to improve productivity. Microsoft also recently reported that 59% of small businesses were likely to embrace the cloud to reap the productivity benefits. As productivity is such a driver for change, we decided to share our top tips for running more productive IT services.
1 – Automate
Manual processes are notorious drivers of rework and lost efficiency. For example, automation has reduced invoice processing costs by 53 percent for some companies, and decreased clerical demands by 25 percent.
Where should you start?
The first step is to determine the most arduous tasks that take up your time, whether it is an IT service responsibility or a business management task. IT, billing, monitoring, management, backup and reporting can all be improved through the use of automation. Rather than wasting time and money on manual tasks while simultaneously putting you at risk for more errors, consider automating business processes that take up more time than you can afford.
Jola recently automated our ordering process so partners can create detailed quotations and send them to their customers who can view, edit and click to order which automatically starts the provisioning process in-house. This has reduced the number of errors from paperwork and speeded up the quote to order time which has improved our hit rate. It has also reduced our need for a much larger clerical team to handle order processing as the company grows.
2 – Centralise
When you are constantly juggling tasks for customers, it is easy for minutes and hours to slip away. It is especially challenging if you are also juggling several tools to get work done every day. How common is it that you’re running several different programs that have overlapping functions and benefits, or receiving different alerts and reports from several applications at once? Not only does application sprawl make it hard for you to stay on top of your work and respond quickly to your customers, it also creates data risk by putting all your most important information in far too many locations. Decentralisation can also cost money.
Where do you start?
Figure out where the redundancies are by asking; Will removing the application save time and money? What are the roadblocks?
At Jola we are in the process of integrating our CRM system with our order management and billing system. Our objective is to be able to view contact details, contact records, order details and billing information under one log-in rather than logging into three separate systems. It has saved time and given us the ability to set up reports we can run monthly rather than gathering data from three sources and putting it together for management meetings.
3 – Organise
When a supplier fails to have predictable processes, there’s a high potential for lost time. It doesn’t take long for simple missteps to create significant issues, and improving your level of organisation is often all you need to reach greener pastures. This is especially important in the world of IT services, because your customers rely on your dependability and reliability. If you’re running into snags or delays because your team is disorganised and your processes are ineffective, it will be very hard to deliver steady service that satisfies your customers.
All of Jola’s processes are documented and include supplier and customer activities. This means when we hire new staff they get up to speed quickly and are less likely to develop bad habits. This also helps us to improve and automate processes.
4 – Focus
It is hard to capitalise on your business plan without the right level of focus and vision. An unfocused team does things that aren’t vital to the business’s goals and fails to move the needle in ways that drive the business forward. A lack of focus is a drag on productivity you can’t afford.
At Jola we have communicated a vision for the company, distributed the business plan and set departmental and individual targets to support the objectives of the business. We run our board meetings and company-wide meetings on the same day, presenting the same materials to ensure every team member can see how they have contributed and what’s next.
Jola works with IT and Telecoms companies to deliver tailored IT and telephony solutions to SMEs. To find out more…
