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Wednesday, June 8, 2016

How To Streamline Your Office: A Business Broker's Guide

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All business brokers need a back-office function to deliver whatever the business needs at any particular time. This means that some business people invest in more capacity than they actually need, so that their firm is not overrun at peak times.

However, working efficiently means cutting away excess resource so that the company can cope with busy periods without overspending in lean times.

Streamlining an office is not all about staffing levels, it should be said. There are many approaches to working smarter rather than harder. Let's look at some of the most effective techniques.

Get into online collaboration

Many business brokers like the tried-and-tested approach of having staff members turn up to work at the same time each day and sharing the same office environment. Although there are undoubted benefits from having face-to-face meetings between managers and employees occasionally, there’s no need to do this every day.

Move to a more agile approach and you can reduce the amount of physical office space needed, thus lowering overheads. Try using tools such as Microsoft SharePoint or Google Docs, which allow administrative staff to work on the same documents, even simultaneously, without having to be in the same room.

Working from home offers them more flexibility, so you may well find that productivity rises when people spend less time in the office – and indeed commuting.

Manage social media effectively

A key part of any marketing strategy these days is a strong social media presence. With so many accounts to log into and share posts from, it can be time-consuming, however.

Instead, consider using a service like Hootsuite, which requires just one login to handle the lot. Furthermore, Hootsuite, or a competitor like Social Pilot or Buffer, offers plenty of metrics on how your posts are performing and what sort of engagement you are generating.

Embrace the mobile age

Although most employees need a computer to create reports and presentations, mobile apps can perform a lot of the basic business administration that executives need to do on the go. Why wait for a chance to get out the laptop to write up notes following a sales meeting when you could
do it from your phone?

To get started, you could try out an app like Producteev. Running on iOS and Android Producteev takes seconds to create meetings with multiple attendees and sends invitations to relevant contacts according to pre-set priorities.

Alternatively, why not have a look at Docusign, a clever little app which means you don't need to be physically present to sign important documents? Anything that requires your written approval, such as supplier payments or customer contracts, can be signed off without driving to the office.

Reduce travel expenses

With a busy sales force out in the field, travel expenses can soon mount up.

Allowing your team to handle their own travel arrangements may mean that you spend less time micro-managing them, but it can soon lead to bad habits. After all, sales executives are less inclined to shop around for the cheapest flights, rail tickets or hotel bookings when they’re not paying from out their own pocket.

By streamlining the process with self-booking tools (SBT), such as those run by Omega World Travel or CTM, many businesses report reductions in travel expenditure by up to 25%. These tools help employees quickly hunt down the lowest air or train fares and alert them to special offers.

Use virtual meetings

When you need to talk to your people or clients but don't have enough time to travel, use a virtual meeting environment like Skype to bring three or four people in different places together in one virtual meeting room. Skype allows you to share screens, so you can even deliver a presentation using the platform.

Another option is Google Hangouts, which is handy if you already use Google Docs.

By Adam Turnbull, Managing Editor of BusinessesForSale.com, the market-leading directory of business opportunities from Dynamis. Adam manages content across all titles in the Dynamis stable, as well as well as being a regular contributor to other industry publications, both print and online.

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