Accounting is full of tedious, repetitive tasks, but as you know, each carries a ton of weight for the success of your business.
As your business grows, you’ll be faced with more decisions, all while you’re doing what you can to save time and money in any way possible.
With so many moving pieces, speed and efficiency become the holy grail for your business.
Bottom line: When you know your systems are working quickly and accurately, you can focus on what matters most to you, actually running your business.
Ways to achieve speed and efficiency
Speed and efficiency may seem elusive, but systems do exist that are proven to work. These aren’t exclusive to large businesses with endless resources, as it might seem. Rather, they’re accessible, cost-effective, and practical for even a small operation.Automation
Automation is the root of speed and efficiency. It eliminates manual work. Manual work doesn’t only cost you time and extra work hours simply because it’s manual. By nature, you have a greater risk of error when tasks are manual, which may take time and money to fix. Simple truth: In manual processes, you have more opportunities for people to make a mistake. This risk may even rise for the simplest of tasks because simple, repetitive, monotonous activities become mind-numbing to humans, who naturally prefer work that stimulates their minds. Automation also supports your efforts to be more efficient by keeping everything in one place and easily accessible. You no longer have to access multiple systems to aggregate financial data. With automation software, you house it in one place and reports automatically pull required figures from other financial documents to stay always up-to-date. This allows you to connect your goals to your financial data and track performance in real-time. Your up-to-date data will benefit you when tax time rolls around by making sure everything you need is ready and available.Standardized processes
The benefits of standardizing processes are well-documented. A study published in the Business & Information Systems Engineering by researchers in the Netherlands found that standardization of business processes led to significant improvements in:- Expenses
- Businesses that implemented standardized processes reduced costs in the form of wages, raw materials, and services.
- Time
- They saved valuable time that could be put to better use to further the companies’ goals.
- Efficiency
- This led to increased efficiency and the allocation of resources.
- Effectiveness
- Businesses became more effective at what they did, delivering a better product to their customers.
- Quality
- They experienced greater quality control and consistency in the products and services they delivered.
- Responsiveness
- They became more responsive to changes in customer demand, regulation, and other factors that often keep businesses on their toes.
