Efficiency is a key factor in any kind of competitive business environment. The less time you waste, the more time you spend doing something creative or productive. You need to run your business as efficiently as possible if you want to make the best use of your limited resources, but this can be more difficult than it sounds.

This is especially true if you’re just a humble startup with a big idea. With the high failure rate of startups and the monetary advantage that large companies have, it’s not uncommon for small companies to have their ideas and talented members poached by larger corporations. This ultimately assimilates the entire brand and turns their awesome idea into something far more bland and uninspired.

So if you want to avoid that particular kind of fate, it’s important to start looking at ways to spend your time more optimally.

Let the experts handle the things you don’t know much about

It may sound obvious to hire experts for things that you’re unsure about, but there’s actually a good reason why many people don’t. In order to grow your business, you need to learn from failures and you need to learn to do things on your own. Many business owners will attempt to do things like managing their finances or even creating a website in order to save money. However, what they don’t realize is that the money they save on things like doing their own web design isn’t worth the time they lose.

It’s vital that you let the experts handle things when you’re unsure. This could be consulting for legal matters, designing software for internal use or even managing your finances. An expert can handle these tasks far more efficiently, even if it does cost a bit more money. However, the time savings are more than worth it because it allows you to focus on tasks that you are personally more efficient at. Just remember that everyone in the business has their own role to play.

Automation can help at times, but it’s not the most important thing

Automation allows you to take a hands-off approach to certain things in business. Whether it’s repeating tasks for reliable and consistent results or generating emails to send to past leads, there are lots of ways for automation to make a difference in your business. Unfortunately, it’s not the most important thing to focus on and people have a tendency to go a little overboard with it.

It’s perfectly fine to automate simple tasks with predictable results. However, when it comes to interacting with paying customers, you want to take a hands-on approach with the help of support staff. Using some kind of automated service will quite literally make your business seem robotic. It’s certainly not the best approach for a startup and you should avoid adopting too many automated systems.

Cut out distractions and focus on growing your products and services

Depending on the type of business you run, it may be important to focus solely on growing or developing your product and services. This is especially true if you’re only in the early stages of your business and don’t have many products or services to offer. It can also be particularly tricky depending on what you offer.

For example, if you’re developing a unique software package then it may be worthwhile to invest in specialized marketing services to help you. A general marketing service would have no clue how to promote a product they don’t understand. That’s why many software companies rely on SaaS marketing services because they’re more likely to understand what appeals to your audience and how to generate more leads. This relates back to our first point about letting the experts handle things.

Establish a collaborative working environment that is free from clutter

Everyone knows that collaborative processes can help speed up work. Being able to write a document and edit it at the same time with multiple different employees can greatly speed up your work cycle. However, it’s also important to realize that collaborative working environments can actually be extremely cluttered and finicky.

You need to establish some level of organization if you want to make the most use of a collaborative work platform. Something simple such as Google Sheets can be amazing as a free collaborative tool for small businesses. However, it can also be relatively difficult to work with unless you have a solid plan and a general sense of direction for everyone involved in the project.