Improving Business Organization: 9 Tips to Get Started

When it comes to running a business, organization is your key to success. If you aren’t organized, then how can you possibly support the company to reach its full potential if you aren’t even reaching yours?

83% of small business owners believe that organization is vital to business, and 63% of SMB owners believe there is a direct correlation between how profitable their company is and how organized they are.

When things get tough or busy in business, things can go awry quickly, and if you don’t have any organization, things can spiral pretty fast. But not everyone is naturally gifted at organizing, and organizing a business is vastly different than color coding your wardrobe or organizing your bathroom cabinet.

Let’s run through some tips on organizing your business and getting things under control regardless of what is happening.

Have A Clear Vision and Mission Statement

A clear mission statement and vision for your company is essentially having a blueprint everyone can follow. Setting these out for all employees, and indeed yourself, means that you can ensure everyone is on the same page and understands what you expect of your employees and what you want for your business. Having everyone working together towards the same goals and objectives can help you to keep things on track at all times.

Be Clear On Objectives

Everyone working for your company needs to be clear on their own individual goals and those of the company. You need to be explicit about what you expect and what you want so people aren’t left confused or unsure about what to do or what they are aiming for. You need to give people targets and give them support to hit this. It’s not good to instruct people to bring in new sales and leave them to it.

What sales volume do you need, how much lead time do you need, and what are you trying to achieve by increasing sales? How will you cope with demand, and how much, if any, is too much? Leaving people to their own devices will create confusion, and no one will know what’s happening, adding to the chaos and disorganization. Be clear and to the point; for example, give your employees a goal of increasing sales by 20% by a specific date, and tell them who will be supporting their work and how long of lead time they need to give you to fulfill orders. The more they know, the easier it will be for them to work towards their goals and support the business.

Establish Workflows and Processes

And then streamline them. You need to examine how your company operates and what steps are involved to get the job done. From here, you can implement processes that enable everyone to work together cohesively to make the process easier and more efficient. 

These workflows must be consistent so that people offer the same levels of consistency at work, both for the team and customers. Your processes need to be improved to boost efficiency and ensure that communication is open and free-flowing so nothing holds up the workflow.

Let’s say you have office and field agents who need to work together to get a project completed or to support bringing new clients on board. Tools such as the BuildOps field service app can connect everyone and ensure that involved parties have all the information to hand to communicate and collate data while reducing errors and mistakes that can impact results. The easier it is for people to collaborate and access essential information, the more efficient you will operate.

Effective Communication Is A Must

Hand in hand with improving workflow processes is improving communication. Both internally and externally. These days, there are many cloud-based communication apps that can allow for easier collaboration and segregation of workers and projects so everyone knows what is going on and the correct information gets to the right people.

Slack, for example, allows you to send instant messaging instead of emails, and you can create groups where you can invite clients and the team members working on their accounts so you can reduce any miscommunication and keep everyone up to date at the same time. Asana, on the other hand, is a communication and project management tool that can help you to ensure all the required information is in a centralized platform, allowing for easier access and collaboration between involved parties.

Develop A Schedule

An effective schedule is one that outlines key meetings, tasks, and deadlines or lets you stay organized and increases organization within your team. Not only will a well-structured schedule keep you on track, but it will also help your team to stay organized as they will know what to expect and adhere to.

It could be that you hold your weekly meetings on Tuesday morning so everyone can catch up, you schedule deadlines for recurring work with the same timescales so people will know how long they have got until closure to get the work done, and you have a list of priorities for each collaboration so people can order their workflow so that the essential part of the work is completed first how you arrange this wall dependant on the work you get in but having a schedule in place allows you to get the important aspects completed first, then move down the line. Working like this can keep each project organized and on track from beginning to end.

Invest in Technology

To support operations and reduce the likelihood of mistakes from human involvement or overloading employees with too many tasks, leading to reduced attention and dedication, you need to leverage technology as much as possible to help you get things done. 

Technology solutions are available to help you automate processes and improve customer service, efficiency, and productivity. The more you can do well, the better you will operate, and the more you need to be organized to ensure your company has everything taken care of.

Some good options to consider are using technology to automate repetitive tasks, using accounting software to keep your finances in order, using CRM to improve customer relationships, and using project management tools to allow for projects to be completed quickly, to break them down into more manageable sections and to improve end results.

Keep It Physically Organised

No one can work effectively in a messy office, so making your workspace physically tidy, as well as organizationally tidy, will help you to be more productive. Having a home for everything and encouraging your team to work tidily and remove clutter from their workspaces and the office as a whole can help you to boost how efficiently your work and what they are able to do; not only is it more aesthetic pleasing, which can be a mental boost on its own, but it is simply easier to find things when everything is put away in the right place, and no one is wasting time trying to find the supplies or information they need.

Have A Clear Decision-Making Process

Making the right decision can cause bottlenecks in your procedures and hold up work from being completed, especially if the final decision needs to be passed through multiple people and can end up being rejected. Implement a decision-making process so that each decision meets strict criteria to help people understand what decision to make and when and ensure it’s the right one. The actual decision needed to be made will depend on the work you carry out, of course, but look at how you currently make decisions and what information you use to make the right one. By eliminating any hesitations and uncertainty from the decision-making process, you can empower your whole team to make better decisions, reduce errors, and move things along further to improve the organization.

Regularly Review Processes

As business changes and evolves, so too should how you work and the processes you have in place. To avoid any loss in the organization, constantly review the plans you have in operation and the procedures people must follow. This can allow you to see inconsistencies and not just presume everything is working as it needs to be.

Look at what is and isn’t working and what the issue is so you can make positive improvements. Ask for feedback from employees and take their suggestions on board to make the right changes for them and for the company as a whole. Do the same for clients; reach out and ask them for opinions on what you do, what isn’t working on their end, and what they would like to see from you in the future. While the answers might not directly relate to how you organize your business, they can allow you a deeper insight into how others view what you do to implement the changes needed to increase organization in areas that could be lacking.

There are multiple ways you can organize your business, and while not all the options at this point might work well for your business, being able to implement a high level of organization can help you improve how you work and get better results with fewer mistakes.