How to Increase Productivity and Efficiency in Your Business

It’s the holy grail of every business, right? How do I increase efficiency? The reasons are obvious. Get more done in less time or have more time for other things. If you’re a small business owner like me then you would love to have a little better balance, however, as I was recently discussing with the CEO of BQE, Shafat Qazi, for people like us there is really no such thing. Let’s be honest – we love, eat, and breathe our businesses and if we could take it with us everywhere we go, we would. Wait! We CAN!

I am reading more and more about this. It’s counter-intuitive, which is why it gets attention, but is it valid? Can we simply take our business everywhere? Won’t our families get mad at us? Maybe, maybe not. If taking our work with us means we can spend more time with them on the whole, then they might actually like that. So we don’t work on a regular schedule. We drop the 9-5 idea (that ship sailed for me a long time ago anyway). We spend more time at home, working from home (I do that anyway) and we spend more time with our families albeit with our work along for the ride. In the end everybody wins that way. It might be a struggle to convince your loved ones about this, but once they see you more, the resistance will wane.

That solves one problem (possibly). The other problem we all want to solve is how to get things done faster without sacrificing quality of course!

The answer simply is that there’s an app for that. Actually there are many. So many that it can be daunting in terms of what to use and for what purpose. Then if you’re like me, you recently had a colleague ask you if you have an app to keep track of all of the apps! The answer is yes. I do have exactly that.

In the months to come, I will be reviewing a series of “productivity apps” that I like to use for my business. Of course when it comes to project management integrating with your accounting process, then you’re already right where you need to be. What else is there?

Here are some of the functions we want to look at:

• CRM
• General information – notes, to do lists, follow up items
• Document Storage
• Social Media – what tools to use, where and when to communicate, and with whom
• Mind Maps? What are they and how can they help

Which tool you use will depend largely on one very basic criteria. Which one appeals to you the most? There is no right or wrong answer on these things. In fact, in my own case I use several apps that overlap in terms of what they can do. For my purposes, I do this so I can evaluate them and make that decision about which one appeals to me the most. Sometimes I forget which app I used for a particular client or project. That can be a problem, so I need one place at least where I describe what is being used for each client, project or purpose. As I mentioned above, I have that and I will be sharing how I manage this all starting in May. This will be in addition to my QuickBooks and BillQuick video tutorials. So stay tuned!

Getting organized and increasing efficiency can actually be a lot of fun. For me, I love to play with these different tools to see what they can do and how they can make my life easier. If you follow along with me here I think we can have a lot of fun looking at these tools. I hope you will post your comments and feedback along the way so that we can make this an interactive journey. I’m looking forward to it.