Starting a business can be one of the most rewarding endeavors any entrepreneur or business person can undertake. As exhilarating as founding and growing a business can be, you rarely hear the same stories regarding running and operating a business. The unfortunate truth is that many businesses soon fall into a state of disorganization, however, there are things that management can do to help clean things up around the office.
1. Reorganize
Okay, this one probably falls into the category of low hanging fruit. That being said, this one also is the most misused tactic. Too often, businesses focus their realignment efforts around personnel, rather than function. The problem with this approach? As managers move around the organization or perhaps leave, what made sense based on the people, may not make sense based on the title or function. This means that over time, you have groups performing functions they might be best suited to perform, typically leading to very inefficient process, procedures, and record retention.
2. De-clutter
At risk of taking the disorganization theme too literal, one great way to clean up the office is to de-clutter the paper. Not only do you gain the obvious benefit of cleaning out files and providing an opportunity to reorganize your filing, it gives your staff the chance to re-examine all of your policies and procedures. Depending on the size of your organization, this may be a rather large undertaking, but it is typically worth it.
3. Business Process Optimization
BPO for short, this can be an effective tactic to reorganize your business functions. It can be costly, which some businesses don’t have an appetite for, but the effects can transform a company for a generation. There are plenty of firms out there that can assist with projects such as this, like Infor, for example. The benefits of Infor for businesses is that they remove the burden of this transformation from staff.
4. Start Outsourcing
For many business owners and managers, this is a hard sell. Many of them don’t want to let staff go, especially many of those that have helped the company grow and succeed over time. All of that considered, growing companies sometimes evolve past their staff expertise, and opportunities will present themselves to outsource specialized expertise, such as Accounting or Human Resources.
Each company is unique and there is no magic bullet. However, if a company takes a thoughtful approach to improving its organization, it will find the elixir it needs to make a long-lasting impact on its processes.
