One of the great things about being a small business consultant is that I get to help my clients see problems and challenges they didn’t even realize were there. Many of us have been working for such a long time with the same tools, the same habits and the same protocols that just having a fresh set of eyes come in and ask some simple questions can be very revealing.
A business owner I recently worked with had a number of challenges to tackle, including promotional materials, bookkeeping and web development. They primarily wanted an extra pair of (qualified) hands to help with the extra work that had been mounting in the previous months. But one thing they were not thinking about was increasing efficiency by reducing the total amount of work that needed to be done.
When I looked at their procedure for managing their mailing list, I realized it was a terribly cumbersome process. With a list of tens of thousands of addresses, every new mailing piece required several hours of labor to organize and sort through the list and eliminate duplicates that had been added since the previous mailing. When I inquired, my clients confirmed that this was indeed a laborious process, and they dreaded it whenever it came time to send out another mailing. Now there’s a needless restraint on promotion if I ever saw one. Since the list was constantly adding new subscribers, the problem could only get worse as time went on.
Using some Microsoft Excel tricks, I was able to streamline the whole “mailing list update” process, making it more accurate and less prone to human error, and reducing the total time for the task from several hours to several minutes. Now more mailing pieces could be sent out, on a more regular basis, and the company could be unafraid in pursuing new subscribers.
Efficiency improvements often come in unexpected places. Done well, they can save you money, time and sanity for very little sacrifice. Sometimes, as in the case of my client, there may be no downside at all, only upside.
