How much time do we spend each week worrying about not having enough time? Our attention gets pulled in all different directions focusing on the fires (priorities) while trying to manage our regular workload. What business owners don’t realize is how much time gets spent each day duplicating information and what does that wasted effort cost your business. 

 

“Time is money” 

The most expensive part to any business are your people. Take an average restoration technician that makes $25/per hour, factor in a 30 percent burden, ten (10) days of vacation time, training events, etc. That same technician is now effectively costing you $38/per hour or an annual cost of $79,000. If you look at the industry average, technicians usually only book 70 percent of their time to a job, leaving you with $23,000 in wasted costs.

 

“Productive Time Wasters” 

A study was recently conducted in the workforce to track how much time gets wasted each day. The study found that conservatively, on average, each employee wastes a minimum of one hour every day in non-productive work, checking their phone, office conversations, emails, etc. If we go back to our average technician calculation, 60 minutes of unproductive work each day, translates to 300 minutes a week or fifteen thousand, 15,600 minutes a year. Costing your business $9,880/per year on wages paid that do not account towards a productive effort. 

 

 “If you (or your employees) are wasting even an hour each day on unnecessary tasks, you can put that time to better use. Pay attention to how you spend each minute of your workday and look for areas where you can improve; I recommend installing a time-tracking app that will run in the background, gathering data on your activities each day and reporting it back to you. Add that to the amount of time you spend in unnecessary meetings and personal talk with co-workers and you'll be able to better pinpoint activities you can reduce.” - Jayson Demers | Founder & CEO of Audience Bloom 

 

 “Accomplishing more with less” 

Restoration contractors are forced into becoming better at recording and managing documentation. These requirements add to the amount of administrative work on every job file and inevitably put a strain on the workload capacity for each employee. As the number of job files increases, the demand for more detailed information also inclines. In order to maintain the same job capacity levels, businesses are forced to find new and creative ways to increase their productivity or hire additional employees. 

 

As a software provider, we determined early on that businesses need a way to focus their efforts into a single solution that provides them with all the tools to increase their efficiency, by eliminating double entry and streamlining information directly to source. Having these systems in place allows business to also increase their accountability by having the proper checks and balances in place to hold their people responsible for their actions. Automating their processes and providing staff with a higher level of transparency gives businesses a way to better control, manage and react to information. 

 

“Time Tracking in the Workplace”

The evolution of smart devices and mobile applications has opened up a number of great possibilities of better tracking and managing information in real time.

 

Most businesses still track time on a piece of paper or use electronic spreadsheets back in the office, which not only opens up room for human error on entry, but also creates issues like time creep or lost information. Time gets recorded manually in the field and then brought back to the office to be entered a second or third time manually again. This process requires someone in your office to dedicate a substantial amount of time for initial entry, but also requires resources when making adjustments, changes or correct errors.

 

“Remote Timesheet Entry”

The ability to track labor in real time provides businesses with a better understanding on how time is managed, where resources are allocated and true profitability of a job. It gives businesses the ability to react to emergencies situations, record accurate labor 24/7 and seamlessly pass that information to those that need to approve. This also provide teams with accountability to focus on how long specific tasks take to complete, based on the individual and how it compares to the budget.

 

 A 1% increase in efficiency can result in a 5% increase in profits - Business Mentors 

 

As the requirements for insurance and program work grows, only the smart will survive. In such a competitive market, technology can be the difference that makes or breaks your business. If you aren’t taking advantage of what these technologies have to offer, you are adding unnecessary costs and overhead to your business.

 

Don’t allow your competitors to take your market share, embrace new technology and ensure your business continues to be more efficient and more effective.