When it comes to your business operations, you may start out with fairly simple processes. But over time, the way you conduct your business can become more complex as your company grows, as you introduce new programs and procedures, and as employees develop their own ways of getting the job done. Unfortunately, this can have a negative impact on your productivity, turning once-simple tasks into monumental hurdles. And the worst part is that very little of the work being done might be necessary for ongoing operations. For this reason, it is imperative that you perform an audit and figure out where time is being wasted, as well as how to best create the targeted practices that ensure work is completed in an effective and efficient manner.

Here are just a few ways to simply business practices that have become too complex.

1. The place to start is by performing an assessment of your entire operation, with special attention to any processes about which employees have voiced complaints. You can’t hope to uncover the flaws in your system unless you take the time to analyze what is being done and pinpoint the wasted steps or unnecessary time expenditure. From there you can make a plan to address any issues you discover, but you need to start with a comprehensive assessment.
2. Once you have a full accounting of the many processes that take place in your business from day to day, your next step is to question the validity and necessity of these processes. For example, you may discover that an employee is spending half of his time completing the tasks he is paid for and the other half filling out reports for various supervisors, department heads, and so on. Are these reports all necessary? Can they somehow be consolidated into a centralized location? Can department heads share so that employees don’t have to complete redundant tasks? These are the types of questions that will help you to streamline your operation.
3. Include employees. Every employee can likely provide you with an opinion about what is working great and what needs to be changed, not only in their own position but in the company as a whole. And conducting a survey in order to compile this information can help you to spot problems both major and minor, giving you the springboard you need to effect change.
4. Compare and contrast potential solutions. Now that you’ve discovered areas where wasteful practices are occurring, you can begin the search for solutions. This could mean discarding outdated, overly complex, or otherwise unsuitable software. It might require you to get rid of managers that aren’t pulling their weight and/or promote employees that have innovative ideas about streamlining processes and increasing productivity. Maybe you need to rethink your entire operation from the ground up in order to reintegrate your goals and strategies into every process. Your best bet is to consider all options carefully before selecting the action that is right for your company.
5. Consider professional help. One option when you want tosimplify business practices is to hire outside help, whether you engage the services of an auditor or you seek out a vendor like Ecount Inc. to provide you with the business management solutions that will help you to streamline processes. If you’re having trouble finding solutions to the complex business practices that are slowing your progress to a crawl, bringing in an expert to guide you could make a huge difference in your trajectory.