One of the main indicators to measure the success of a business is its profitability, the profits will determine the prosperity and continuity of any company. Something that any entrepreneur should consider is that profitability precisely goes hand in hand with productivity.
What is productivity?
Productivity has a broad definition, it goes from the economic, productive or business point of view. In essence, productivity is an indicator of the efficiency of a business using a certain amount of resources. This efficiency may be due to human resources, infrastructure, but mainly to technological resources.
Increasing productivity can also occur at any stage of a business, in order to achieve increased profits.
Therefore, adjusting your business to processes that involve increasing productivity will lead to an increase in your profitability, being an important factor that every company must consider to update its processes, improve its competitiveness and above all adapt to the market that now provides new tools to the management and administration of SMEs.
There are factors that impact the productivity of a business, these can be external or internal, thus we have:
External factors: These are all aspects that the company cannot control, since they are alien to it. Such as new government policies, economic policies, competition, customers, etc.
Now we tell you 5 tips to increase productivity in your business
1. Implement a point of sale system
An important factor to increase productivity is to optimize time, so in less time more is produced. For an SME, one of the main factors that will have a direct impact on profits is sales.
Sales: Selling should be a simple process, speeding up customer service time and recording each transaction made for optimal after-sales management of the business. There are still many companies that use manual processes at this point, for example preparing a manual bill or invoice not only takes away valuable attention time, but also, there is a greater possibility of making manual errors when performing the calculations.
The best way to modernize your business and automate the sales process is through point of sale software , it is important that the system you choose adapts to your needs and business area, you should mainly consider these characteristics:
Make it easy to use: A factor to take into account is that the chosen system is friendly, remember that both you and your workers will be involved in the use of the software, therefore, it must be manageable and understandable for all types of users.
Have a fast point of sale: Obviously if we want to increase productivity by optimizing the number of transactions per day, a fundamental part is to have a point of sale that allows you to issue electronic tickets or invoices in a few seconds, fast sales improve the quality of service the customer and increase the efficiency of the cashier, it would also be ideal to have a point of sale that allows you to register the means of payment, register the customer, make discounts, manage price lists, etc.
Online system: Working with online software has multiple advantages, above all because it allows you to carry out transactions and view sales in real time, which will allow you to take better control of your business, knowing what is happening at all times, without having to have than take you to the store.
2. Systematize your inventory
At this point you have to understand “systematizing” by ordering the information of your merchandise in a system that allows you to track each product, from how it arrives at your warehouse to how it left your store.
Having a meticulous control of your stock has many advantages to make your day-to-day life and that of your workers more productive:
It will be faster to find a product: An inventory control system will help you to know immediately whether or not you have stock of a product.
Anticipate stock breaks: By having updated information on your merchandise, you will know when to replenish merchandise and thus avoid stock breaks. There is nothing more annoying for a customer than going to your store or entering your website, looking for the product and not being able to finish the purchase because it has been sold out.
Improve rotation: With the appropriate software, and having your stock information in real time, you will be able to quickly recognize which products have the most inventory, with that information, you will be able to develop strategies to improve rotation in your business, such as For example, create displays at the head of gondolas with the products that you have more stock or create 2×1 promotions, you can also make sales in case they are products of a season that is about to end.
3. Train your staff
The constant updating of your staff to increase productivity is a good practice considering that in the majority of SMEs, workers are the ones who constitute the most important human capital.
Technifying processes should also involve all those involved, that is, that everyone knows about the management of new tools, this will help align your staff under the same work methodology.
There are also other resources for each member of your company to improve and / or optimize their skills:
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Sales techniques
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Improvements in knowledge, skills and attitudes
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Management of critical clients
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Claims or returns attention process
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Training in the use of new sales software
Be clear that it is worth investing in your staff, employees focused on customer service can have a huge impact on the productivity of your store. So invest in them.
4. Plan
Planning in a business involves studying the environment of your company, analyzing and evaluating the objectives in order to obtain planned results with some anticipation. Therefore, it is important that you define your objectives and the resources necessary to achieve them.
Planning sales is key to any business , set sales goals that are challenging but achievable. To achieve this, lean on digital tools such as sales systems, which give you the sales history of previous years or months, which allows you to make comparisons of sales between months, by product or by customer, in this way it will be much easier to have real information of the possible growth you can achieve. In addition, with a sales software you will be able to know which product was the most sold in a certain season and in this way have the necessary stock to satisfy the current demand.
5. Create strategies
Creating a strategy is creating value for your brand, here you must be clear about your objectives and the resources that you are going to use to meet those goals.
It is essential to consider strategies for your business, what to do, how to do it and when to do it . The strategies are variable, depending on what you want to achieve: marketing, sales, inventory management strategies, etc.
Keep in mind that in the strategy or strategies that you focus, these must be composed of a plan, that is, of a series of planned actions that will help you obtain the results you expect.
Strategy and Bread are complementary
