Inefficiency drives up costs. Even worse, it’s often difficult to pin down the exact source of inefficiency.

Is it your employees, the process itself, or the equipment? Inefficiency is especially dangerous for small businesses with small profit margins.

Fortunately, there are many small business solutions that can help you overcome inefficiencies.

Let’s dig into some of them.

Create a Disaster Plan

It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that things will keep moving along in the same way. Your town hasn’t flooded in 50 years, so it won’t flood this year. Your server didn’t die today, so it won’t die tomorrow.

This kind of reasoning tricks small business owners into not planning for disasters. Yet, it’s gross inefficiency.

Failure to plan leaves you grasping for solutions under conditions of stress, which leads to bad decisions. Planning around the most likely disasters leaves your armed for decisive action if the worst happens.

Outsource Your Marketing

Modern marketing lives at this weird intersection of psychology, showmanship, and technology. You must understand how to entice people, but also how to measure that enticement.

It’s also a time-intensive area of business management. Good marketing requires a long-term strategy informed by market segment research. You can’t do that research or that kind of planning catch-as-catch-can.

Outsourcing your marketing lets you put it into the hands of people who understand the tools and methods already. Odds are good you’ll get better results. It also lets you focus your time and energy on the business areas where you’re an expert.

Process Automation

You can automate everything from manufacturing to parts of human resources. Automation projects done well can serve as small business solutions. You must still approach it rationally.

One way is to look for existing solutions to your problem.

Say you’ve been collecting information from potential customers via email. You can automate that process by putting a form on your website.

You can always hire a web developer to write the code for you. A different option is to use something like Meteor Forms online form builder. They create a digital version of the form and you just install it on your website.

Use Collaborative Tools

Collaborative tools are an efficiency godsend for teams. They let team members track progress, share files, and chat via a business sanctions messenger system.

That prevents problems like work duplication and missed messages about project changes. If everyone sees the same messages every time they start work, nobody is off track.

Provide the Right Tools

Small businesses often look to save money by using solutions that aren’t designed for the task. These cost-saving tactics often turn into a long-term money drain.

Say you’ve tasked someone to do serious data analytics but given them an underpowered computer. They’ll waste tons of time waiting for a slow computer to give them results.

Giving your employees the right tools for the job makes them more efficient.

Parting Thoughts on Small Business Solutions

You can use small business solutions to boost efficiency. Doing it well means seeing your strengths, weaknesses, and employee needs.

Collaborative tools serve teams well but don’t help employees who don’t work closely. Outsourcing your marketing boosts efficiency, but more for time-starved owners without marketing expertise. Process automation is at its most efficient when you can deploy ready-made solutions.

Looking for more ways to improve your business? Read our post on the best human resource practices.