When you look at a company like Uber, think about what makes them successful.
For me, among other reasons like safety and convenience, it’s their ability to give me back my time. You don’t need to call a cab office, wait for a taxi on the street or for public transport; when you need to get from A-to-B there’s an Uber driver waiting at your door.
Time is a precious asset today more than ever before. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s your most precious asset — that’s why I find it interesting to see how many of us waste our working hours on things that don’t matter.
Interesting read by Gary Vaynerchuk: The one thing people will massively overpay for
The daily productivity challenges
For people in accounts/finance, time is often wasted on trawling through countless spreadsheets, inputting data manually and having to juggle multiple sources of information. Or maybe it’s the Operations teams who need inventory data but have to dig through stacks of paperwork to be able to trace a batch of products and stock levels. And let’s not forget management who need information to make top-level decisions quickly; what about the time wasted on asking for reports in the first place and then having to wait for them too?
In all of these business functions, the ability to save time — or better yet, maximise use of time — can help you to get the very best out of your teams.
That is where technology and using the right business tools comes into play.
The impact of employing the right tools
Using technology like Microsoft Dynamics NAV — an Enterprise Resource Planning solution that brings your business applications, data and documents into a single system — the accountant who previously juggled spreadsheets and manually input data can automate tasks and have one central system to work on, instead of disjointed spreadsheets.
With a single system to look at rather than multiple, Operations teams can know exactly where their stock is at all times and trace it effortlessly.
And rather than ask for reports and insights from employees, top-level management can log in to the system and analyse performance or access the data they need.
The point is, using the right tools in your business can be the difference between hundreds of hours lost on unproductive tasks every week, or a company that gets the very best out of its teams and resources.
What kind of business do you want to be?
