Past posts have talked about ways to save time and resources. Today’s post discusses how to evaluate how efficient your business is and make changes where needed.

Efficiency refers to the output that a company generates in relation to energy and effort invested. Optimal efficiency, when in play, is the desired outcome produced with the least amount of effort, resources, time, and cost. Peak efficiency may be the long-term goal across all aspects of business, but even small, incremental changes can result in increased efficiency.

Whether your business is efficient or not has huge impact on the success of the business; everything is affected – employee retention and morale, the working environment, profit, time management & productivity, and use of resources. Signs of inefficiency include meetings that go on and on without accomplishing anything, a leads process that takes too long or is otherwise unwieldy, resources spent searching for needed items, and a strategy that is not focused or not focused enough on high gain activities.

Below are three methods to increase business efficiency without a lot of effort.

Prioritize. Ascertain what matters most for business success. Resources are generally in shorter supply than desired, so we often need to make choices on how to spend these resources. Determine which projects have the highest priority for business success and focus on those. Other projects and tasks which have less of an impact on business success can be placed on a waiting list for later.

Analyze resource-intensive tasks. Then determine whether the time and resources required for each task is worth the results. Ask which responsibilities absolutely need to be completed and which can wait, be delegated to someone else, or be delayed or deleted. Then proceed accordingly.

Focus on high gain activities. High gain activities are those that produce the most results with the least amount of effort. Organizing files by subject, for example, provides more ROI than color-coding files by type. When determining how to spend scarce resources, focus on items that provide the greatest ROI to the business.

Lisa Mark, C.P.O. is a productivity expert and Certified Professional Organizer. Contact Lisa if you would like to find out how she can formulate a plan to increase efficiency in your business.