5 Ways to Save Over 100 Hours Per Month – Easy

1. Automate Emails.

Do you have emails that you send out all the time?  Follow up emails, confirmation emails, or welcome emails that you send out constantly can add up.  Automating emails can save an average of 7-10 minutes – for each email!  Since the average person sends an average of about 35 emails per day, even if you automate 10% of those emails, that can make a different fast.  By creating a template and dropping in specific customer info, you can cut back on time spent on email, and create a nice looking and consistant method of keeping in contact with people.

Estimated Time Savings: 15 hours per month

2. Automate Agreements, Proposals, or Quotes

If you are like most businesses, it is necessary to prepare agreements, proposals, reports, or quotes for your customers or clients.  It can take 24-46 minutes on average to prepare a document, it can take up to an hour or more if your documents are complex.  By automating these documents you can save a significant amount of time while also eliminating errors and providing a more consistant document.  At CME, we have created multiple systems for our own business where we can enter client specific information, but the majority of information that stays the same is dropped in automatically creating a professional looking document, customized for the client, in a matter of minutes.

Estimated Time Savings: 12 hours per month

Case Study:

The Problem. A company came to us with the difficult problem of having over 12 different types of agreements that their sales people were generating for their customers on a consistant basis.  While they had a general format, each and every sales rep generated the agreements differently, and often with mispellings, wrong math, and missing sections.  Some used an excel spreadsheet to do their calculations, others used their own tools.  They were horribly inconsistant, and mistakes were costing the company money.  The Solution? Creating a space that held client specific information as well as calculation fields, sales reps were able to choose what type of agreement they wanted to generate, enter the base numbers for that particular client, and the application did th rest.  It calculated the agreement amounts, filled in the appropriate language based on the agreement type, and generated a professional looking PDF agreement that could then be automatically securely emailed to them for their signature. (These agreements also got saved directly into the company DropBox). The Result? This company was able to take on more clients without the fear of bank breaking mistakes.  They went on to grow at over 100% that year with happy customers and sales reps who were not as stressed out about making mistakes that were costing the company money.

3.  Task Assignments or Requests

Intake is one of the most painful points for alot of businesses.  Having someone immediately available to collect intakes (applications, requests, submissions, etc.) can be nearly impossible.  But what if you could have your requests or submissions automatically feed into a backend system that assigns the appropriate follow up tasks automatically?  What if you could have the information submitted automatically, find it’s way to its appropriate place, and find it’s way to completion without getting lost or taking way too long to manually process?  That is totally possible!  For us and the people we have worked with, this has saved an average of 10 minutes everytime a task assignment is automated.  Making this transition can be the most impactful.  Not only does it automatically assign the tasks, but it makes everything consistant.  No more spreadsheets, no more sticky notes, no more 5 minute walks down the hall to convey a message.  Different people can see tasks, and know where a project, task, or priority stands without having to dig, call, walk, or find.

Estimated Time Savings: 40+ hours per month

Cast Study

The Problem.

4. Meetings – And Lack Of

Have trouble keeping your team on the same page?  Are you still relying on disjointed calendars or meeting logs to remind everyone of meetings and then know what happened during them?  You are not alone.  For many business we talk to, this is a daily struggle.  Especially in a team environment, communication and collaboration are so important.  For some, they find themselves in constant meetings just trying to figure out what is going on.  Don’t let this happen to you.  Find a tool that will allow you to collaborate and communicate without all the meetings.  And for the meetings you do need, make sure you can have a place to put notes and comments where team members can easily find them so they are always informed.

Estimated Time Savings: 40+ hours

Case Study:

The Problem. For one business, they found it nearly impossible to keep track of all their projects in a way that everyone in the team could know what was going on and could easily talk to a client about things if necessary.  They also found it difficult to keep track of priorities in regards to any particular project.  The result was a jumbled mess of spreadsheets, tons of sticky notes, and more than a few disgruntled clients – and team members.  The Solution?  A system that involved a shared calendar, and a customized project management space that held all the information everyone needed to see and allowed or notes, comments, and even time entry to make sure they stayed in budget.  At different stages of a project, automatic tasks were assigned that everyone could see.  The Result?  A much happier team, with happier clients.  With the extra time, they found, they were able to work on putting together more value added services that made their clients feel special rather than forgotten.

5. Reporting and Business Growth

No business owner has the time to spend hours slaving over multi-tabbed spreadsheets trying to figure out the state of their business.

*Disclosure.  No jobs were hurt in the scenarios mentioned above.  We belive process management and workflow solutions should enhance jobs  not replace them.