Streamline Business Processes To Maximize Efficiency — 3 Important Keys for Professional Service Providers
In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick responses. But what if the service you provide and the business processes they include aren’t designed for quick turnarounds and 24-hour-a-day access? Or what if the life you want doesn’t include being accessible to your clients day and night?
Professional service providers like CPAs, financial advisors, marketing agency owners, and others generally get into business because they love how they can serve clients. But what often happens is they find out serving clients well takes a lot more time and energy than they realized.
If you’re a professional service provider, how can you streamline your business processes to maximize your efficiency while also providing the high-quality service clients keep coming back to you for? Read on for three keys to more efficient processes that can help you have more free time outside of work.
Key #1 – Discover where your inefficiencies are hiding in your business processes.
Block off some time to analyze your business processes — onboarding and offboarding clients, generating leads and converting the sales, opening and closing the office. Include your team in the brainstorming if you’d like. Together, think about the way your business operates. Ask yourself how you do things in every aspect of operations.
Then, write down what you find. Are there some key points where you simply don’t have a process? Maybe in other areas, you have a procedure, but it’s not working well for your team. Make a note of each inefficiency that you discover and include the impact each one has on client satisfaction, profitability, and your ability to shut down for the weekend without thinking about work.
Key#2 – Strategize to address the inefficiencies.
If you’ve discovered a lot of inefficiencies, you may feel overwhelmed trying to address them. Don’t let that stop you! Take one at a time, and consider a couple of things with each one:
1. Do you need a clear protocol for your team to follow? If the answer is yes, sit down with your team to map out a step-by-step process that addresses the specific inefficiency you want to resolve. Plan to revisit the new protocol in three months and update anything that’s still not working well. If you already have a process, but your team is struggling with it, review it to see where it could be improved.
2. How well are your standardized workflows working? Have you established templates for client deliverables so they’re consistent across the board? Standardize reports, presentations, proposals, and other deliverables so your team can simply plug and play, without having to reinvent the wheel for every client.
3. Are there technology solutions you could implement to increase efficiency and automate processes? For CPAs, maybe that’s an updated accounting software or an automated email tool. For other professional service providers, it could be a new CRM, a project management system, or a generative AI tool that can make research, mapping, and other processes more efficient.
Key #3 – Implement the efficiency strategies.
Again, if you’ve discovered a significant number of inefficiencies in your workflows and business systems, you may be excited to address them all at once or you may feel overwhelmed thinking about where to start.
Either way, when you strategize following the guidelines above:
- Start with just one strategy.
- Introduce it to your team.
- Give your team time to get used to it.
- Plan to revisit it in three months.
- Be flexible and willing to revisit it sooner if your team struggles with the implementation.
For professional service providers looking to maximize efficiency, these three keys can lead to improved processes that’ll support the high quality of service you’ve always provided while giving you more time to live life outside of work.
At Growth Academy, we believe professional service providers can run their companies efficiently, provide top quality service, and still take the weekends off. If you’re not there yet, reach out.
