8 Tips for Making Even Complex Business Operations Efficient and Smooth

In today’s business world, the way we work is changing continuously and rapidly. Business operations used to be relatively simple a decade ago. Today, they become more and more complex. In the rush to grow your business, it’s easy to overlook efficient workflows in the backbone of everything you do. Whether those business operations are digital or hands-on, find out what the experts are doing to streamline their process and make even complex jobs run like a well-oiled machine.

Whether you’re one person in a small company, or the vice president for a large corporation with many departments, the tips below will help you streamline your workflow and increase your business operational efficiency.

So read ahead to know the tips and operational improvement strategies that help you remove the stress out of your complex business operations.

1. Know Your Operation

Every business is different; No two businesses have the same operational requirements or the same budgets or skill sets; that’s why it’s important to know your operation inside and out before you start trying to make it more efficient. It's every part, how each connects and works with the next, and how efficient it is – or isn’t. Your people are valuable to this process. With their experience and insights on the ground floor, they may be a great resource for getting started.

Managers often overlook the value of regularly walking the floor to evaluate areas that are labor-intensive or where traffic may be congested. In addition to this simple step, more formal audits, metrics analysis and even business intelligence tools are useful to evaluate business operations management.

Making complex business operations more efficient and smooth comes down to knowing every part of the operation. 

• Start by mapping out the workflow and processes being executed. 
• Identify the connections between tasks, and inefficiencies you can eliminate.

2. Streamline And Simplify Operation Management

It’s no wonder that today’s small business owners are always pinching pennies and looking for ways to cut costs without sacrificing quality. But it isn’t cheap, complicated software that can help you streamline your business operations – it’s a few tips of the trade that can transform even the most complex procedures into simple processes. By taking the time to review your daily tasks, you can identify unnecessary steps and replace them with smarter alternatives. Unfortunately, this often takes a lot more effort than simply downloading an app or hopping on the phone with an account rep to sign a software contract.

But it isn't that difficult and it is possible with the right action. You can streamline your business operations to increase the efficiency and productivity of your company by doing the following.

• Establish operating procedures and standards, then hold employees accountable for following them with established processes so that they know exactly what they're responsible for doing on a daily basis
• Automate processes to save time, improve accuracy and standardize routine workflows.
• Focus your attention on specific goals and methods for achieving them.
• Don’t forget to review the processes frequently

3. Choose The Right Inventory

Inventory management has a greater purpose than simply knowing what you have on hand, or if you’re running low. It’s one of the most fundamental functions in your business and offers data that can be used to oversee multiple departments and operations. No one likes inventory to lie around in the warehouse gathering dust, especially if it is perishable. But again you also want to plan ahead as much as possible to ensure you have what you need on hand when customers come knocking at your door.

With the right inventory management, you can ensure that the right products are in the right place at the right time to fulfill client requirements. 

Follow these 3 steps to do this effectively, 

• Decide which products are most important to your business, then ensure stock of them always exceeds demand. 
• Consider factors such as when you’re able to restock, and if there’s an error in your estimates, having too little inventory is far better than having too much. 
• When in doubt, lean toward the products that are the driving force behind your revenue and stock those more heavily.

4. Keep Up With Trends

Today, more than ever before, businesses need to optimize their operations in order to keep up with fast-changing market conditions. By keeping abreast of trends, and thereby knowing what your customers are looking for, you can more easily anticipate and support their needs.

Technology and the Internet offer businesses the ability to improve efficiency in nearly every aspect of their business operations management  -  and those that do not fall behind. To keep up with trends, SMBs should consider investing in the latest technology and online services that can help simplify business operations.

Using the cloud, integrating data and investing in top talent are the best ways companies can remain relevant and efficient.

5. Emphasize Bottleneck Management. 

In business operations management, the “bottleneck” is defined as the process that limits the flow of all other processes in the organization. Wasting time at the wrong bottleneck can quickly break any business, so it’s vital to focus on this task, improving speed and accuracy at every opportunity.

No matter how efficient individual parts of your operation, bottlenecks will cause delays. By identifying bottlenecks and finding ways to eliminate them, however, and creating new processes for making everything run smoother, you can take a huge step toward becoming much more efficient.

6. Get The Balance Right Between Quality And Costs

One of the major challenges businesses face when it comes to business operational efficiency is balancing quality, costs, and processes. You need to focus on getting the balance right. As long as the processes are smooth and you constantly keep looking for ways to improve them, you should be able to maintain an efficient business that provides high-quality services and products. Keep an eye out for new technology and methods that could help your business stay efficient and productive.

The secret to success is having everything you need at your fingertips, and the right balance of quality, design and functionality. Too little floor space and too much effort may cause mistakes. Too long of a path will eventually turn into a nightmare.

The principles of lean manufacturing are based on maximizing value by reducing waste and errors. Whether you're a small- to medium-sized organization or a large company, these concepts apply in many areas. This helps your employees achieve greater business operational efficiency and a higher quality product

7. Motivate Your Team To Raise The Bar

The workforce is changing, and today's workers hunger for growth, development, and progress. For your business to keep up with these changes and thrive in today's competitive market, it's essential that your organization builds an engaging culture that motivates, attracts  and retains the best and brightest.  

You may also like: Power of Problem solving using design thinking in building a strong company culture

Make sure you motivate your team to raise their own bar so that everyone knows what they can do to increase productivity and efficiency. Even after you’ve made improvements, it’s important to not settle for a new status quo. Instead, always strive to incrementally improve results and raise the productivity of low-performing associates.

If you want a cohesive and efficient team, everyone needs to be on the same page. There’s no one better positioned for this than you. Real leadership motivates workers to perform at their highest levels and achieve a goal together. By empowering your team, success is just around the corner!

8. Train Your Employees

Perhaps the most important thing any business can do is train their employees. This can be anything from basic training on how to use the cash register or computer software, to specific training in a particular area of your business operations. Taking the time to thoughtfully make sure your employees know what they need to know will go a long way to making your operation run more smoothly.

To make any business run smoothly, you have to train your people. However, even the most trained employees can get confused or overwhelmed when there are so many tasks and products to manage.

How you train your employees for different processes and areas of responsibility can make the difference between a smooth process and one that is stressful and time consuming. Everyone should have a basic understanding of how their tasks/roles fit in with the overall process. 

Pro tip: Gamified simulations are a great way for employees to practice a process before trying it out in real life. It also helps avoid mistakes that result from lack of training. This gamified simulation has helped many teams understand the building blocks of business operations management skill gaps, responsibilities and overall process of improving operational efficiency at ease.