Small or big, eBay or Amazon, you’ll do better in business if you are organized. Better organization leads to efficiency and saves time. It makes you more productive. Every hour saved has a dollar amount attached to it, and we don’t have you tell you that. The trouble is the chaos that business really is and the hard work it is just to stay organized. Too many things to do, time always runs out, and we all have limitations to how much—or how hard – we work.
That’s why we believe that you should run your business in an organized way. In fact, we insist that it should be a priority. The more organized you are, the smoother your business operations are. Here are ways to stay organized from the start (or from now on):
Make organized effort a culture
First, stay organized. Then, make sure that your partners and employees will all stay organized just like you do. Just like great companies have marketing or customer as an integral part of their business culture; take efforts to bring organized workflows to your business. Every business process should have a particular process for it. Everything should be recorded. Develop systems for everyone else to follow.
Your business, in effect, should run like a machine. It’s called the “push button” approach, and it means just that: come in, push buttons, and the business shall run.
Go digital
Your ecommerce store is already virtual that’s a great start. Try to work your businesses without involving paper. Of course, it might help to take prints when you really need to but it’s not always necessary. Using web-based apps, tools, software, and probably a combination of all of those, take your business to the cloud. For instance, use Freshbooks or Xero.com for accounting, invoicing, payroll, bank reconciliation, and sales records. You may use tools such as Appath (yes, it’s a shameless plug) for managing everything from inventory management to order processing; integration with shipping and printing labels.
Print only when you need to. Otherwise, go green. It’s cool.
If there’s an app for that, use it
In today’s rush of the smartphones and tablets, it’s imperative that you’d wake up and sleep with these mobile devices. Thanks to the pace of development of apps for these mobile devices, there’s no dearth of apps you can use for your personal productivity or for your ecommerce business. Spend sometime to figure out the best apps you are comfortable with and start using them to get things done.
Learn from others
If you haven’t started your business yet, it makes sense to intern or work part-time at existing businesses to learn how business operations are organized. Alternatively, get a job at Walmart, Amazon or any large ecommerce businesses to learn all about inventory, warehousing, sorting and shelving products, and even using barcodes. The lessons you’ll learn from this stint at another business will prove to be priceless. Think about it.
How do you stay organized in running your business? Can you share a few tips with us? We’d love to hear from you.
Img Credits: tr0tt3r on flickr