Office productivity is a major factor that drives your company’s success. After creating an inviting office space and determining the best office layout, turn to these four technologies to tweak office productivity even more:
Electronic database
A paperless filing system is one of the many green initiatives in the office you can implement. You’ll save paper and file space when there aren’t multiple copies of agendas and minutes floating around.
More importantly, your employees can do their jobs more effectively when they have easy digital access to client files and your company’s knowledge management system. Your employees can also rest assured that they’re always opening the most up-to-date documents when everything is stored and updated on your company’s electronic database.
Remote access
This takes the electronic database idea one step further by allowing your employees access to it off-site 24/7. You can do this either by having the database and applications made available on the cloud or setting up VPNs for all employees.
The advantage of remote access is especially apparent if you have many employees who work out in the field. That way, they’re backed by full company resources no matter where they are or what time zone they’re in.
Workflow automation opportunities
There’s always a way you can improve company operations as long as you keep looking. The first thing you should do is to pinpoint where your operational bottlenecks are that take up more staff time than necessary. Then, implement a software or app that will streamline that process and make things easier on your staff.
Also, are there certain procedures your office carries out on a daily basis? See if a software or app can help make following through each step smoother.
Don’t underestimate the power of shaving off even a couple minutes on one step. It’ll all add up to huge cost savings and productivity boosts in the long run.
Project communication tools
Emails are not the most efficient method for the rapid-fire communication that often goes back and forth on projects. There’s a huge risk of important emails getting buried in the middle of never-ending email chains, which only results in unnecessary meetings just to clarify what the chain is all about in the first place.
The best solution for efficient project communication is chat-based systems like Slack. Even a built-in chatting platform on your company’s project management system would be better than email. What you want is a system that employees can reply informally and quickly with their ideas, which would all be located in a single thread that’s searchable.
You’ll notice a significant reduction in meeting times because the bulk of communications and clarifications of miscommunications would already be worked out in real-time on the chat thread.
By embracing technology to maximize office productivity, you’ll give your company an edge over the competition.
