Improving Efficiency in Start-ups

When Adam Smith popularized the concept of division of labor, the world began to realize that efficiency can lead to productivity and company growth. Boom! Modern capitalism was born. A lot has changed since then, but the fundamental truth that efficiency is good for business will likely never go away. If you want to push your growth and support your business as it moves forward, efficiency is the name of the game. It will also serve to make your products or solutions or services as close to perfect as you have designed them to be.

Learn from the Japanese Schools of Thought

Japan helped increase the world’s efficiency during the 20th century with philosophies that shape how modern production lines and business flows work. Kaizen is a great philosophy for your company to adopt – it literally translates as ‘good change’ and involves making small steps forward every single day. This will make every member of your company more productive, which will translate to an increased and more efficient growth process. If everybody has the simple task of making a positive change every day, the company will do much better as a result.

Six Sigma Lessons

Six Sigma was developed by Motorola and managed to reduce mistakes along the production line. It did so incredibly successfully, leading 99.99966% of all processes involved in the production line to produce products free of defects. This means you don’t need to spend so much on quality control, and as a rule, it means you will have good, trustworthy products. What’s more is it doesn’t need to just be relegated to manufacturing (it can help you to design). You can use lessons from Six Sigma in any process in your company to improve efficiency.

Automation is Key

Without automating tasks, you will waste a whole load of time that could be directed towards growth. A great tool to use when automating and streamlining is an Enterprise Resource Planning solution, or ERP tool. These involve accounting tools, manufacturing tools, CRM, Human Resources, Supply Chain trackers, business intelligence modules and inventory management features all in one useful tool. You can use them to automate data collection and oversight processes or just to identify bits of your company that need improved streamlining. It’s important to choose the right ERP system, as you may have noticed there are a lot of different features that you might not need.

Make Sure Everybody Can Communicate

All your employees should be able to communicate and collaborate with each other. Although employee flow is greatly important, you should trust your employees to ask for each other’s help when it will lead to a net increase of efficiency (i.e. if they feel they will waste more company time by looking for help online or elsewhere). Encouraging your employees to collaborate will also improve efficiency by introducing different perspectives into decision making. So often, decisions are made that will only increase efficiency in one department, which looks over opportunities to increase efficiency across the board (or even at the expense of another department).

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