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How Efficiency Can Boost Your Profits

Home » Blog » How Efficiency Can Boost Your Profits

At Valenta, our Managing Partners are business owners with a range of backgrounds and industries, but we all understand that having a streamlined business, no matter what industry you are in, is key to ensuring sustainability and growth.

However, efficiency in business is a conscious decision and also an investment of resources and time. So let’s start by asking: What is efficiency and why should you invest in it?

If you are feeling like you are spending a lot of time working “in” your business, instead of “on” it, it might be time to look back at your business efficiencies.

Often the biggest hindrance to the ability to scale up is having the necessary processes in place. As the owner of the business, your time is a limited resource, so where is the most valuable place for you to spend your time?

Burnout and stress are common among business owners, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Many businesses take the opportunity to review efficiencies to take a step back and put the foundations in place, so they can improve their profits whilst reducing their time spent on mundane and time-consuming, but necessary, tasks.

3 Considerations to Improve Efficiency and Their Benefits

1.Business Process Optimisation (BPO)

BPO has become a popular term, but what does it really mean? BPO stands for Business Process Optimisation. It is the ability to streamline the processes that support your business so it can run more effectively, better satisfy your customers and increase profit.

For Financial Planners, this typically means analysing your customer journey and being able to assess areas where there are data-entry double-ups or other ways your process can help you get the end result faster, and without compromising quality.

2.Fit for Purpose Software (Appropriate Software)

If your solution is not fit-for-purpose or set up correctly, it can cause more harm than good. And this is where many businesses come unstuck when they roll out new processes.

A good question to ask is how do we get the right solution?

Mapping your workflows is a simple way to work out any gaps or repetitions in your processes.

  • What can be streamlined?
  • Why do we undertake work in a certain way?
  • What points require that human touch?
  • And what points can be standardised and automated?

Perhaps something as simple as an online booking system with automated emails requesting pre-appointment information, or sending a post-appointment follow-up is something simple that can be automated in your business.

3.Outsourcing Staff

The next step is documenting your new processes, which minimises the loss of productivity and time spent training when you engage new staff onshore. Having well-structured processes and continuity plans also contribute to the saleability of your business in the long term.

Having these processes documented, or someone who understands your business and can industry document the processes for you, means that it will be easier to scale, grow and even outsource those time-consuming tasks.

Consider:

  • Are there certain communications that a virtual assistant can send on your behalf?
  • Are you spending time chasing clients to book annual reviews, and could a virtual assistant do this for you?
  • Are there higher-level tasks that a Paraplanner could look after, such as chasing up insurance quotes, so that you don’t need to?

There are a number of considerations to optimising your efficiency, but having a clear process, the right tools and a skilled team to support your business provides the right foundations for successfully streamlining your business and improving the bottom line.

How to Calculate the ROI of Your Investment

Your profit is of course going to be a deciding factor in the return on your investment in efficiency. But there are other benefits that are worth looking into when determining your ROI:

  • Profit & Margins
    • How much do you currently spend on staff and software to deliver a service?
    • Will additional software save you in wages or allow you to produce a higher standard of service?
  • Staff retention & happiness
    • In a competitive market, taking the mundane tasks off the plate of senior staff so they can focus on time with clients and the aspects they enjoy can help you maintain your staff retention
    • Studies show that improved staff happiness increases productivity
    • Whilst recruiting and training new staff can limit productivity
  • Your time allocation
    • As the owner of your business, do you want a better work-life balance?
    • Do you want more time to develop and work on your business goals, without sacrificing the productivity of your business?
  • Capacity to scale
    • Laying the foundations for future growth is a long-term reward and may take time to see the benefits to your bottom line as you grow your client list

The Future of Efficiency and its Potential to Help your Business grow

Small and medium businesses are adept at providing tailored services, but often lack the resources of larger organisations. Business Process Optimisation (BPO) provides an answer to this dilemma – giving SMEs access to modern tools that drive efficiency while maintaining their flexible approach. BPO helps bridge the gap between large enterprises and small business; allowing companies of any size to reach peak performance without sacrificing what makes them unique.

Technology advancements are driving the rapid evolution of business operations. With the sheer breadth and depth of new software and tools available, it can be challenging to determine which solutions make sense for investment in order to maximise ROI.

We understand how difficult it can be to manage an onshore or in-house team. That’s why we offer dedicated backend support to help you increase the longevity and productivity of your business, while still saving on HR costs. By utilising us as a partner, we can help streamline your processes so that you can focus more on providing excellent customer service and generating revenue. We have years of experience in this field and are proud to be able to provide superior quality back office solutions tailored specifically according to the unique needs of each client.

Contact us today to chat with one of our Managing Partners about how Valenta can support your business.

Investing in Efficiency Can Boost your Profits

Business efficiency means maximising your outputs from your given inputs – or making the most of your resources. If you haven’t thought about how to improve future business efficiency, it might be time to see where you can cut down on those time-consuming tasks, saving you money and manpower.

Reducing your costs and maximizing your output are tried-and-true ways to beat your competition and increase your profit margins. But this only scratches the surface of what it actually takes to create an efficient business.