With thousands of tech companies existing on the market, every company is trying to outdo the next in an increasingly saturated competition. There are really only two ways to guarantee that you’ll do well in any highly competitive industry – superior innovation or elevated productivity. In other words, your objective as a medium enterprise should be to come up with something that is so radically unique that it instantly occupies its own lane, or just develop more productive processes than your competitors. While we can’t tell you how to be innovative or what exactly you should be inventing, the following seven tips will help your tech business win from the other angle – performance and productivity:
1. Createa Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Track Key Performance Indicators
A balanced scorecard is a strategic methodology that looks at organisations from more than just a financial perspective. It recognises that all organisations have customers, internal processes and infrastructures. Therefore, these things need to be measured as well. Many tech companies, even medium and large ones, have started using BSCs to bolster their funding efforts, as investors often gravitate towards such reports as proof that a company will continue to grow and be profitable. If you want to learn more about BSC in action, Intrafocus (one of the leading suppliers of the software) has written up a useful guide on what it is and how it can be applied.
2. Define Peak Productivity Based On Current Output Potential
Optimising business performance means achieving peak productivity, but you can’t aim for something that you haven’t yet identified. The best way to assess this attribute is to time and measure the capabilities of your team on anweeklybasis. Once you know what everyone can do individually within the span of a week, you can realistically estimate how much should be done if everyone worked to their full potential throughout a typical month.
3. Find a Sustainable Balance and Pace
The problem with trying to aim for peak productivity on a weeklybasis is that it can become taxing on your team’s energy, creativity, and reliability. Thus, once you have defined peak productivity, it’s time to tone it down a notch to achieve a sustainable pace. As a general rule of thumb, you should only expect your employees to complete about 70 to 90 percent of what they’re actually capable of doing within the course of a week. This is an important concept for tech businesses of all sizes to understand because the development and maintenance of apps, websites, and electronic devices typically requires a concerted ongoing effort, as opposed to short bursts of intense work.
4. Strategically Increase or Lighten the Load on Individual Employees
Instead of basing your allocation of duties on the productivity potential of the average employee within each position, speak to your HR department and ask them for reports onthe skills and shortcomings of your team members. This will help you determine who should be handling the brunt of the work. Keep in mind that the most prolific tech companies invest millions in talent recruitment, always searching for the best developers and innovators. As such, if you already have that kind of talent on your team, it’s wise to take full advantage of their services.
5. Consolidate and Centralise Software Management
Every tech company relies on a suite of software to manage their online affairs. Most likely, you can relate to this because the majority of business owners in any industry use at least 3-5 online tools or platforms during the course of the average workday. The problem is, you’re wasting a lot of time and effort by switching back and forth between account and software interfaces. Fortunately, there are dashboards that can sync all of these tools together into one management interface. Furthermore, taking a consolidated approach makes it easier to export data related to all of your tools in one shot, for a more well-rounded analysis and a more convenient daily routine.
6. Set High Standards and Initial Expectations Within Job Descriptions
When your employees know exactly what is expected of them before they even start their first day of work, you won’t have to check up on their progress as much because everyone will be on the same page. A thorough orientation and on-boarding process is important in the tech sector because employees need to be given clear guidelines about how to steer their creativity and productivity within their designated roles.
7. Practice Employee Monitoring and Refine Hiring Processes
Finally, now that you’ve developed a system for training staff and tracking progress, it’s time to assess the individual performance of each team member. Take your time to set up a good HR department, hire and reward the right people and your business performance will shine as a result.
In conclusion, by heeding the tips above you can simplify business performance management into a predictable and replicable process that can be applied by any tech business to achieve desirable results.
