Business Efficiency Through Effective Time Management (A Practical Approach)

We all are familiar with the phrase “Time is money” but most of us quite often do not find that “money” to which time is related. 

So today's post is about finding that money, I am going to give you guy’s practical and reasonable approach to time, how to utilize it in the best, effective and efficient way to achieve the maximum benefits.

Along with that I would give you guys a method on basis of which you can connect time to tasks, to processes, to daily activities of your business that would result in maximum utilization of time with maximum benefits for your business.

So let’s get to it.

Time as Mean to Efficiency and Effectiveness

Let’s take an example, for instance there are two Restaurants.

Restaurant A (RA)

Restaurant B (RB)

RA is market leader, having great customer satisfaction, maximum profit, maximum sales etc while RB is somewhat mediocre thus not having great customer satisfaction, proceeds, sales returns etc.
  

Now let’s take RA and one of its specific tasks that is customer order taking & serving, the whole process cost RA 6 minutes while the same process costs the RB 9 minutes.

Now let’s do a little math.

For instance both RA and RB has 20 tables with two chairs for each table which means two individuals at one table, let’s assume that the RA and RB performs the task customer order taking & serving after every 25 minutes. 

Both remain open for instance for 6 hours, now let’s calculate how many customers do they serve in a day, in a week, in a month.

RA, RB Calculation For One Table

Minutes utilized	Hours	Customers Served	Time saved
50	Hour 1	2	10 Minutes
50	Hour 2	2	10 Minutes
50	Hour 3	2	10 Minutes
50	Hour 4	2	10 Minutes
50	Hour 5	2	10 Minutes
50	Hour 6	2	10 Minutes
Total = 300 minutes	Total = 6 Hours	Total = 12 Customers	Total = 60 Minutes

Now adding the time saved (60 minutes) and putting it in the equation.

We get a Total of 14 customers order taken and served at one table in 6 hours with 10 minutes saved.

Now since RA takes 6 minutes compared to RB that takes 9 minutes for the task “Order taking and serving” therefore RA utilized less time (efficiently and effectively) compared to RB thus saving total 42 minutes.

How do we get those 42 minutes, well its easy multiply 3 minutes saved (by RA) with 14 (Total number of customers order taken & served at one table in 6 hours).

3 * 14 = 42

Adding those saved 10 minutes with those 42 minutes

10 + 42 = 52 minutes = 2 more customers for RA

Thus RA is serving 16 customers in six hours with 2 minutes extra (on one table)

While RB is serving 14 customers in six hours with 10 minutes extra (on one table)

Now calculating total number of customers for 20 tables

RA & RB TOTAL TABLES TOTAL CUSTOMERS

Restaurant	Total tables	Total customers
RA	20	20 * 16 = 320 customers/6 hours
RB	20	20 * 14 = 280 customers/6 hours

Just imagine, just three minutes difference can make such a huge difference, imagine the profit difference, imagine it for 12 hours, for one week, for one month, imagine the profit, imagine the sales.

The above whole exercise was carried out to emphasize the importance of time; a little difference of few minutes can make such a huge difference.

Now I mentioned the RA as a market leader for a reason, considering the above calculation RB is under-utilizing time for the task “Order taking & Serving” and if RB was attaining far more than RA for the task “Order taking & Serving” then RB would have been over utilizing time doing a dirty job that would have resulted in poor product/service quality, customer dissatisfaction etc. 

Though I admit that the task “order taking & serving” would be carried out efficiently and effectively , way sharper than the market leader, but it must have tradeoffs somewhere, either in preparing the requested order, quality of the requested order or in the intangible side of the task (service), waiter or employee behavior, attitude in the whole task etc etc.

Remember that market leader is the yard stick, they hardly have Achilles heel (weaknesses). And that’s why they lead the market.

So what you need to do is to find that optimum level (by comparing time utilization and outcomes for a given task/activity with market leader and the rest of your competitors) where time utilization is maximum along with the benefits or expected outcomes are maximum, each and every activity in a business model is carried out to attain certain outcomes, those outcomes can be called the direct outcomes, while there are outcomes that are indirectly related to an activity, those can be termed as indirect outcomes.

Click to enlarge

So a direct outcome in our aforementioned task/activity example is profit maximization by serving more customers in a given time, this outcome is the core purpose of that activity (Order taking & Serving) while indirect outcomes could be customer satisfaction, customer attraction and retention, heavy/hard training of the employees, effective time management etc.

So you not only need to find an optimum level for an activity/task where time utilization is maximum but also where direct/indirect outcomes are maximum too.

Now this doesn’t mean that you should look for a maximum in all possible indirect outcomes, rather it means to identify the key indirect outcomes for an activity/task.

Competitors & You

Lastly calculate optimum time utilization in comparison to the rest of your key competitors (esp market leader) for all key tasks of your business, organization, firm. Once you do that, the next step is to calculate it for one business day, then for a business week, then for a business month, business year…

Along with that what you would need to do is to identify by careful comparison (with key competitors, market leader) the expected outcomes (direct/indirect) for those tasks/activities for one business day, business week, business year, as soon as you identify the expected optimum outcomes with minimum tradeoffs for whole business model and optimum time utilization with minimum compromises for whole business model for a given task/activity etc then you need to take the next step!

The Next Step!

The next step is to set goals (direct/indirect outcomes), targets (direct/indirect outcomes) for all those tasks/activities while ensuring optimum (maximum) time utilization for those tasks, activities.

Assessment & Corrective Measures

You know have all the information on optimum time utilization, optimum outcomes (direct/indirect) thus what you need to do is to cross check or compare optimum time utilization, optimum outcomes of your tasks/activities with those of the competitors.

If things are going well, then things are going well and if they aren’t going well, then you need to restratagize, rearrange, redefine or in other words you need to take corrective measures where necessary.

So keep assessing with constant corrective measures until it gives you the expected optimum outcomes along with optimum time utilization.

That’s how you can achieve business efficiency through effective time management.

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