Time Management at the Heart of Success
Published: 21/10/2024
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This long-form article is going to explore the role of time management in building a successful business. The key focus is on process automation and the software that supports it.
What is a business's most valuable asset? Most of the time, the answer is ‘people,’ and it is justifiably so. No organisation could be successful without diligent and hard-working employees. However, there is something else, as even the best-trained teams are bound to fail without it. Time. Or, to be more precise, how it’s allocated and managed. Think about it. The saying goes ‘time is money’ for a very good reason.
The less time you spend executing tasks, the less budget will be spent. This is the most straightforward equation explaining the correlation between time and money. There are plenty of others exploring quicker return on investment that, in turn, drives scalability or dabbling into hour-based employee pay. The core idea of them all is the same - time management is vital in your pursuit of success.
In this article, we will discuss ways to maximise this crucial practice. Multiple sources share tips for harnessing time management, yet we are approaching it from a digital standpoint. Namely, our focus will be elevating your efforts through the adoption of digital solutions, specifically digital timesheets and time tracking software built on a SaaS model.
The secret to successful time management is centralised visibility. Secondary to that is accuracy. In other words, to manage your time successfully, you need to be laser-accurate and consistent in recording it. The data you collect should be stored in the same place and be easily accessible for either quick or thorough analysis.
When you see the full picture, you can evaluate your current situation and plan future actions. Collecting data on the go also enables you to quickly assess the efficiency of the implemented changes, granting freedom to optimise the moment you spot an opportunity. However, before that, you need to ensure you have a strategy in place and are equipped with the right digital tools.
Both topics are rather extensive and tightly woven together. In this article, we will discuss each of them in detail, as well as the connection points you should pay attention to. When strategy and technology work in tandem, you open the door to limitless opportunities, as every action you take will feed you actionable data. Continuing to build on it and experiment with new approaches is at the heart of success-driving time management.
Every success story begins with a plan. By breaking ambitious goals into smaller, actionable steps, you will eventually pave your path towards excellence. In this section, we will discuss the starting point of every plan, the aspects to prioritise, and the additional resources needed for your journey.
The pursuit of success begins with a goal. Unless you have one, none of the actions you take will have an aim, rendering them more or less useless. You also can’t begin thinking over your time management strategy if you don’t know what you’re applying your time towards. In other words, before you can start working towards success, you need a clear definition of what success looks like to you. We presume you’ve heard about SMART goals, and, as cliche as it is, that’s the framework we strongly recommend you use.
In the context of this article, it’s the ‘T’ that makes it relevant. Since goals in this framework are supposed to be timely, the process of working towards their achievement is naturally laced with time management. Having a specific time by which the goal needs to be reached is the premise for planning ahead, determining which tasks should be prioritised, and forecasting how long their execution will take. Naturally, your forecasts will never be 100% accurate. But here’s the thing: the more you use this approach, the more patterns you’ll see emerging. And this, in turn, will raise the accuracy rate of the forecasts moving forward.
We emphasise accuracy so much because it’s a long-term investment that also delivers short-term wins. Even with a small quantity of data collected within a short period of time, you can make a number of changes to your processes, enhancing either their flow or efficiency. For example, accurately determining how much one person spends on a certain task may highlight to you they’re struggling. And you can then allocate more people to join them, potentially cutting down on the turnaround time.
In the long term, accurate data is irreplaceable for spotting trends and patterns. Both create visibility of where your potential weaknesses and opportunities lay, therefore making them accessible to address. It’s especially important in terms of spotting things that hold you back. Spotting issues early on prevents them from festering. The challenge is that often, they don’t get noticed until the situation gets dire, further complicating the problem. Accurate, centralised data, on the other hand, quickly deals with this roadblock, enabling you to nip the issue in the bud.
Last but not least, to become truly efficient in time management, you will need the right tools. Namely, digital solutions are your best bet. They are intuitive, can be programmed to your team’s specific needs and generally blend seamlessly into your existing processes. Such helps them become natural to use instead of adding up to a to-do list. Not to mention, most solutions bring to the table options of automating repetitive manual tasks, such as keying data in, which in itself is a contribution to better time management. The best bit is that digital tools collect accurate and actionable data often without being prompted to - through your mere use of them. In other words, they offer endless opportunities.
Our recommendation is digital timesheets. Not only are they a safer and more convenient solution to traditional business practices, but they also carry a plethora of advantages. For example, a custom setup may make them nearly impossible to tamper with. Additionally, through integrations, you can transfer them straight into your accounting platform, which takes away the need to calculate and add them manually. Different vendors will offer different sets of features, but we assure you the perfect solution is out there.
There is no limit to how good one can get when it comes to time management. Since today’s world is heavily dependent on digital solutions, the opportunities are endless. Namely, like other aspects of digital transformation, it’s not a one-off. It’s a continuous process that can be optimised to no end.
The beauty of automating your processes is that it doesn’t have to be all done in one go. In fact, it shouldn’t be done all in one go. While digital transformation sounds grandiose and instant, it’s more relaxed in reality. Automation begins with small tasks. Instead of changing the entirety of the process, you should automate one step at a time, analysing how it affects your results moving forward. The findings should organically point you in the direction of the next place to tackle. Or, they might reveal your approach wasn’t right, prompting you to look for a better solution. Either way, automation and digital transformation itself are not one-off events but rather continuous and gradual processes.
It is also true that the more you automate, the more additional automation options will reveal themselves to you. So, it is theoretically impossible to automate all in one go as you never have full access to all of your opportunities. This also puts you in a position to set the pace of transforming your business. How fast you should go largely depends on how receptive your teams are to the changes. Digital time tracking is a good place to start the process as it helps you introduce little changes to your processes as you move along. They add instant benefits and are easy for your team to get used to, as well as offer many different routes to progress with digital transformation.
Having touched on data and its collection, it has to be said that for it to be useful, you must actually use it. However, a familiar predicament companies find themselves in is that there are many different tidbits of data, and it’s challenging to determine which metric belongs where. That’s why most digital solutions come equipped with the reporting module. Instead of having to spend time trying to make heads and tails of the findings, the software crunches them up for you. Presented in digestible and often visual format, the reports are easy to analyse and base decisions on. Additionally, many modern solutions allow you to customise what kind of data you’re presented with, as well as choose its presentation and time frames. Most platforms will also showcase a dashboard consisting of your key metrics upon login in, meaning you won’t need to get a thorough report for casual day-to-day tracking.
Reports are crucial to improving your time management and aligning it in a way that brings success. Time-related reports document where your team’s efforts go, offering you a better outlook on task prioritisation and resource allocation. Additionally, as you track time spent executing similar tasks, you will notice trends emerging, which will help you enhance the accuracy of future forecasts. Another advantage of automatically generated reports is that they only take a couple of minutes to be put together. Depending on the solution, you can set up a schedule for them to be created and sent to your email on a certain day, too. The findings you get are also the cornerstone for future decisions.
In the earlier sections, we briefly mentioned integrations. We’ve also spoken about how the more you automate, the more automation options emerge. There is a link between these two. SaaS solutions are generally designed to be stackable, one of their selling points being integration with one another. As a rule, most tools already offer a degree of automation. When linked together, they unlock additional functionality, such as transferring data from one app to another upon its insertion. Naturally, this leads to different types of data emerging, which, again, can be used to fuel further automation efforts. In other words, integrations further expand the scope of automation options available.
Time tracking solutions can be integrated with various other tools. First, there are sector-based time management tools, which will naturally be available to connect with the specialist software the industry uses. For example, our Recruitment edition has seamless integrations with a few CRM systems. The most common integration is with accounting software, as many digital timesheet platforms oversee time and bill processes. Some also aid with the expenses. Data from both inevitably goes into the accounting tools. What integrations do in this scenario is transfer it for you without your direct involvement. It may not seem like a big, time-consuming task, but as we’ve mentioned before, automation is all about small tasks and them stacking up.
And we fully mean it when we say it. While all the above practices may sound intimidating and complicated to implement, they don’t have to be. In fact, given you want to make efficient time management a consistent practice, it needs to be as convenient and effortless as possible. Humans are wired to be less diligent in carrying out tasks with any sort of roadblocks present, no matter how small. Removing them is the fail-proof solution to the issue.
To be successful in your effort to both adopt and maintain good time management practices, you need to embed them into your day-to-day workflows. Make it a natural process so your team won’t think twice about executing. There are many ways of ensuring that, and digital solutions are perfect for that. For example, you may program a digital timesheet solution to automatically open a display requiring the worker to log their hours once they reach the end of their work day. Or, you may send an automated reminder to the approvers, prompting them to review the submitted timesheets right from their email inbox. The possibilities depend on the vendor, but one thing is true: it is designed for simplicity, and you should utilise it.
Time management begins with planning. Before you can map your actions and begin allocating time and resources, you need to have a goal. From there, your priorities should cover the accuracy of the data you collect. It will point you in the direction of the following steps, and thus, it’s essential to keep it error-free. While it sounds complex, modern technology is perfect for aiding you in that with little hassle involved.
In fact, it offers other great benefits that help you embrace time management practices that build success. Most digital solutions offer automation options and thorough reports to analyse how the changes are affecting your organisation. What’s more, SaaS solutions are stackable through integrations, enabling you to create efficient workflows that generate more actionable data. Additionally, linked tools often open doors to new automation opportunities.
Finally, while mastering time management through harnessing modern technology sounds complicated, it is not. The process heavily relies on simplicity, ensuring it blends into your existing operations instead of disrupting them. What’s more, it doesn’t require you to rush; instead, it allows you to control your own pace. Growth and improvement take time. And you want to manage that time correctly.
Need further help in elevating your time management efforts? Get in touch.