Leverage Technology to Increase Productivity

Not long ago, I had lunch with a fellow entrepreneur who is truly a superwoman. She’s building a great company in a much-needed sector. She’s super smart and a great CEO. She mentioned that she was spending way too much time reviewing and approving expenses submitted by her employees. It was a drain on her time and something she really didn’t like doing. I asked which expense platform she was using and was surprised when she told me she wasn’t using one. Her employees submit expense forms and receipts directly to her monthly. I ran through a list of platform names, and while she’d heard of a couple, it hadn’t occurred to her that one might be a fit for her needs. I strongly recommended that she check out two of my favorites and assured her that using one would change her life.

That conversation got me thinking about how we, as entrepreneurs, can be laser-focused on growing our businesses yet overlook opportunities to leverage technology to run them more efficiently. According to recent studies, nearly half of all small businesses fail to leverage technology effectively, significantly hurting their productivity. The key reason for this is simple: we don’t know what we don’t know. It can be easy to get so used to keeping our heads down and doing things the way we’ve always done them that we forget to come up for air now and then and explore whether there might be new and better ways of doing them. Finding better, easier, faster ways of doing things is critical to scaling a business. Leveraging productivity software is a vital way to do this.

According to the site timelyapp.com, there are four types of productivity software. Productivity software that:

Measures work: This kind of software quantifies productivity over time via things like scoring, charts, and graphs. Its objective is to show you how well something or someone performs against a goal or how much time is spent on something. Remote work apps that provide insight into how much time employees spend on various platforms are examples of this.
Automates low-value work: Software that falls into this category helps to reduce or eliminate repetitive tasks. Expense management software and software that automates time tracking and the submission of timesheets are examples of this.
Simplifies processes: This type of software aims to eliminate that kludge we fall back on because we don’t know of a more elegant solution. You know, like the way we copy the URLs of sites we plan to use later as research sources for a blog post and email them to ourselves and hope to God we remember what we did with them when we finally find time to actually write. (Or is that just me?) Digital notes platforms, browser extensions, and apps that organize email inboxes are examples of this.
Aides focus: Software of this type helps to block out distractions so that we can focus on getting work done. Apps that block access to certain websites or allow you to set timers while working on specific tasks are examples of this.

There are tons of products in each of these categories, which can make finding ones that are a good fit for your needs challenging. As a first step, I’d recommend asking peers what they use in their businesses. Online publications such as Inc., Forbes, and Entrepreneur frequently publish lists of the best productivity software for small businesses, which are good to look at. I’ve also simply Googled tasks I felt were taking too much of my time to see what solutions popped up.

Making better use of productivity tools in your business can literally change your life. Set finding the best solutions for your business as a high priority to-do for 2023.