Save time, cut costs and drive new levels of operational efficiency without sacrificing quality – this is how to develop a tech-based efficiency strategy for any business in South Africa and beyond
Looking to advance your operational efficiency?
Don’t be fooled by over-simplifications: business efficiency is more than mere cost-cutting. True efficiency is about creating smarter workflows that help your organisation do more with less, without sacrificing quality or customer satisfaction.
In short: It's about refining operations (not merely cutting them) to maximise value, enabling your company to respond faster to market changes, improve customer experiences, and allocate resources where they matter most.
Here’s how to build an efficiency strategy today…
An efficiency strategy is a structured plan to strategically and systematically optimise workflows, eliminate waste, and leverage technology to achieve more with less effort. Leaving optimisation up to individual departments might not yield the unified and business-beneficial results you’re looking for, so an efficiency strategy centralises your organisation’s efforts to optimise.
Efficiency strategies are crucial as they can enhance profitability and streamline operations to make you faster and more reliable while enhancing your work environment for employees.
The first step in creating an efficiency strategy is comprehensively examining your business's operations. Much like the initial steps in business systemisation (as explained in this video), every step and function in every department of your business can be broken down into:
Begin by mapping out every key process from start to finish to understand how tasks flow between teams and departments. Using employees in this assessment can provide firsthand insights into recurring pain points, redundant steps, or outdated systems that hinder productivity, but visual process mapping tools can also help you do this highlighting inefficiencies that might not be obvious at first glance.
Once you’ve identified inefficiencies, the next step is to define what success looks like. Setting clear, measurable goals ensures that everyone in the organisation understands the targets and works towards them.
These goals could focus on reducing processing times, cutting operational costs, improving customer satisfaction, or minimising errors. And you can track progress effectively with key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect these objectives.
Once you’ve identified repetitive, manual time-consuming tasks, look to automate them. Easily automatable processes like invoicing, data entry, and customer onboarding are prime candidates, freeing up employees to focus on more strategic work.
Implementing tools such as project management software, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or AI-powered platforms can enhance accuracy and speed across operations. For example, using automated scheduling tools can drastically reduce administrative workload, while CRM systems can improve customer communication and retention efforts.
The key is to choose technology solutions that align with your company’s needs and can integrate smoothly with existing systems.
Efficient communication is the backbone of effective teamwork. Review how your teams communicate and collaborate to identify opportunities for improvement. Transitioning to digital communication platforms can reduce email clutter and keep conversations organised in real time.
Fostering a culture of transparency where teams share information openly and proactively can eliminate misunderstandings and keep projects moving forward smoothly. Simplifying how information flows within the organisation ensures everyone stays aligned and focused on their objectives.
Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for routine tasks helps ensure consistency and reduces confusion – you might have best practices documenting step-by-step processes already. Yet be sure to balance out standardisation with flexibility.
Innovation requires your people to be energised, challenged and empowered to take risks. Yet overly rigid processes can stifle that creativity and lead to a loss of autonomy. Remember the goal of efficiency is to streamline routine work without limiting the ability to respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.
Even the best efficiency strategy will falter if employees aren’t equipped to implement it. Investing in comprehensive training ensures that staff members understand new tools, processes, and expectations. Ongoing education helps teams stay up to date with evolving technologies and methods, which is crucial for maintaining efficiency gains over time.
Implementing an efficiency strategy isn’t a once-off task — it requires ongoing measurement and adjustment. Regularly reviewing metrics and comparing them against your goals will reveal how well your efforts are paying off.
It helps to establish feedback loops with your teams to gather firsthand input on what’s working and what isn’t
A powerful exercise to help you get started with efficiency strategy thinking is to take a close look at one critical process within your organisation.
Take inventory management, for example. Map out each step from the moment stock is ordered to when it is shelved and eventually sold. Are there any manual steps? Filling out paper order forms, for example, or performing physical stock counts sporadically?
Next, identify inefficiencies. Perhaps orders are delayed because approvals require multiple signatures, stock levels are inaccurate due to infrequent counts or manual data entry into spreadsheets causes errors. With these insights, you might already be able to set some initial goals – let’s reduce or streamline sign-off processes, automate stock tracking or develop a digital ordering system, etc.
Improving efficiency is similar for all processes across all departments and functions, so can already imagine how to start structuring a thorough, company-wide efficiency strategy.
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