Squandered, in the process of time, are precious minutes and hours gone forever, albeit unintentionally. The adage “TIME IS MONEY” applies perfectly. Whereas, minutes turn to hours; turning to days of lost time and money.
Considering the process of time, MOST small business owners and managers haven’t a CLUE how long it takes to complete an actual workflow process. For this reason, the ESTIMATED versus ACTUAL time a process takes to complete goes unmeasured and unreported.
Oh, they have what they think is a rough idea. However, dealing with thousands of small businesses over the process of time, we have discovered that MOST of them have never systematically TIMED a process.
Moreover, they have no method for measuring workflow processes on EVERY job, service, or project.
Unfortunately, a GUESSTIMATE is their measurement for the management and process of time. A time estimate based on pure conjecture. Bad system!
WHY is the loosey-goosy practice of “guesstimating” the chosen method for estimating process times in most small businesses?
- The business is making a decent profit, so “why bother” they say.
- Owners or managers have little to no experience implementing a system of time tracking.
- Time management of processes is a distant priority due to other poor management practices.
- A misguided belief that employees would not adhere to having workflow processes timed.
- Leadership issues.
“Time is what we want most but what we use worst” …William Penn
“Lost time is never found again” …Benjamin Franklin
Job Management Software Under-utilization
To be clear, much job management software contains time-tracking systems.
Unfortunately, the business owner usually delegates the implementation of new software to other employees. Whereby, without the owner’s direct input and vision, many of the software features are NEVER implemented; much less utilized.
In fact, 45% of features in Shop Management Software goes totally unused. And rarely used is another 19% of a software’s features, resulting in a 64% under-utilization ratio.
How do we know? It is our business to know the utilization of software management tools.
Truthfully, the money lost due to poor time management of processes in most small businesses would SHOCK owners and managers. However, they will never know until they measure the lost-forever time and irretrievable dollars.
Benefits of Controlling the Process of Time
- Knowing the number of man-hours needed to complete any Job/Service/Project
- Accurate scheduling of employees and work
- Employees know management expectations regarding their work pace
- Micromanagement of employees regarding work pace no longer needed
- Reports of Estimated Times versus Actual Times is available for continual improvement
- “Slackers” can’t take advantage of other good employees due to NO time-tracking system
- On-time delivery promises are kept
- Peace reigns when maintaining control of workable hours and meeting deadlines
- Better understanding of the workforce needed for the amount of work in progress
- Yes, and more profit!
The creation of time was for mankind to maintain order in life, AND business!
Did I mention? Great systems work!
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