With so much advice and so many tools available to entrepreneurs, it’s never been easier to kickstart an ecommerce business, but turning that business into a successful one and maintaining it in the long run is another story.
When you’re managing your own ecommerce business, you’re likely to find yourself running out of hours in the day to get everything done. Implementing ways to effectively and efficiently manage your time will ensure that you can juggle the various aspects of your business.
From staying on top of stock control and dispatching orders, to handling customer service queries and the wider business strategies, here are a few ways to harness time management so that your business can grow into a profitable investment.
Train Your Employees Well
Whatever stage your business is at, you’ll want to ensure that you are hiring the right people to complete your team. Recruiting people with a range of specialist skills means that you can rely more on your employees to oversee different aspects of the business.This will relieve pressure and allow you to dedicate your own time to the overall management of your ecommerce business.
That being said, you’ll want to offer strong training programmes for your employees too. Ensuring that each person understands the duties and processes that make up their role is vital. If your employees are often approaching you for advice or queries, this can take up a lot of time out of your day. Make training materials and information easily accessible so that your employees can consult this where necessary, and host routine training programmes to refresh skills as required.
Outsource Aspects of Your Business
Although it’s essential to make wise hires, you may be able to free up your time and save money by outsourcing aspects of your business. If you find yourself juggling multiple duties with nobody to delegate these to, outsourcing might be the solution. Even though some tasks may be time-consuming for you, they will not necessitate the hire of another full-time employee. You could consider outsourcing certain duties, such as...
- Marketing
- Customer service
- Fulfilment
- Accounting and finance
To begin with, concentrate on building a small but strong team of employees that can focus on the main elements of your business. This will keep things running smoothly on a day-to-day basis.
Automate Certain Processes
When it comes to online businesses, automation is key. If you find yourself doing the same little tasks over and over, there may be a way to streamline these processes through automation. Consider what tasks you complete daily that are relatively simple but time-consuming, and look for software and productivity tools that let you work smarter.
Common things that you could consider automating include…
- Coordinating staff with timesheets
- Inventory management
- Sales order processing
- Social media promotion
- Email marketing
- Sales and metrics reporting
As your online business grows, having automation in place will boost efficiency, it will allow you to better prioritise your workload, and it will ensure that your business can flexibly upscale.
Perform Routine Time Audits
Although it may seem contradictory if you are already strapped for time, performing routine time audits gives you a better understanding of where time is being allocating. This will instantly flag problem areas that may be draining your time but shouldn’t be. Then you are in position where you can figure out ways to be more economical, and can adapt individual processes to suit the overall profitability of your business.
As mentioned before, coordinating your staff by using timesheets gives you the chance to look at the wider business and make changes that can impact the whole running of your online store.
Streamline your eCommerce Business
Managing your ecommerce business can be challenging, which is why it is so important that you have time management principles firmly in place to keep fully on top of your business’s activities. By delegating to your staff, outsourcing where necessary, automating processes, and keeping an eye on where time is being spent, you can concentrate on the wider strategy.
At Exact Abacus we offer ecommerce software and solutions that help manage the day-to-day tasks, leaving you to focus on the growth and success of your business. Get in touch with a member of our team to find out how our ecommerce packages can help your business.
by Katie Shepherd on 02/05/2017
