Optimizing Business Operations – How Time Tracking Software and Time Sheets can Help Improve Your Organization

Oh, time. A substance that is impossible to produce and replicate, and also the most precious and scarce. For a thriving business organization, time is equivalent to money, so managing time well should be at the top of its priority list.

The two reasons why effective time management is important in a business are to improve employee efficiency and to streamline business operations. These are two components that have the greatest impact on a company’s financial bottom line.

Employees are a company’s best assets. They are literally the ones running the business in a day-to-day manner, generating income and troubleshooting errors or inadequacies in the whole system. Inefficient employees more often than not translate into an incompetent organization. The essence of a company is actually the people behind it, and not its buildings, structures, and equipment. However, these play a vital role in supporting the employees working at their maximum level.

When employees are at their best, the company is at its best. And aside from giving them good compensation, helping them utilize their time wisely will significantly benefit them and the whole company as well.

Where Time Sheets Become Essential

Irresponsible and inappropriate use of time is one of the top causes of employee dissatisfaction as they feel like they are just wasting away their time inside the four corners of their office. They feel like they have lost their sense of purpose and work becomes a burden rather than a blessing. When employees have a way to track their productivity and accomplishments based on the time they spent on their tasks, their confidence and self-esteem grow.

Effective time management brings out the best in the staff and is also advantageous to the company as employee idle time will be at a minimum or even possibly eliminated. When everyone is giving their best skills and efforts, the company’s revenue is affected positively.

When it comes to business operations, time management is also of the utmost importance. Streamlined systems and processes result in smooth and economical daily operations. With well-organized day-to-day activities, the company is able to minimize its losses and save money in the process. The money saved can be used for future infrastructure enhancements or invested in other ways that will further improve the whole organization.

Enhanced Customer Loyalty

Not only that, efficient business processes also translates into excellent customer service. When the company is able to provide its customers a satisfying experience that exceeds their expectations, it will result in remarkable sales because they will come back again and again to buy its products and services. This ensures business sustainability as faithful customers guarantee steady income for the company.

Service excellence also creates brand loyalty that is emotional and psychological in nature. This is the deepest relationship that a company and its clientele can have. Customers become the company’s number one public promotors.

These two compelling reasons, employee efficiency and streamlined business operations, are more than enough for a business to get the best solution when it comes to time tracking and management.

Fortunately, gone are the days when manual time sheets are used to track employee time. These days, almost everything is performed digitally with time tracking software.

The Best Time Tracking Software and Timesheet Programs

Implementing the best time tracking software is highly essential for an organization to run smoothly. In fact, almost all of the top corporations in the world today have their own time management systems. The only difference is how each of their employees responds to it.

A complicated time management and reporting system is too strenuous and burdensome for employees to abide by. Even the company’s executives and managers can have a hard time preparing their own time tracking reports if there are so many elements and data to fill it up with. These kinds of computerized timesheet programs are in fact counter-productive, and instead of helping workers reduce and simplify their workloads, it adds more tasks to their already jam-packed schedules.

What if you can come up with a system that is familiar? Something that is already being used by regular employees for their own personal time management needs?

The Microsoft Outlook Calendar is a common program already installed in most, if not all, computers in a typical office. It is a very simple tool used to organize and plan an individual’s schedule. Although the program has its limitations, adding supplemental software to enhance the Outlook Calendar’s features for it to be able to meet specific business needs is highly possible. Such a need could be timesheet reporting, and one of the best tools here is TimeSheet Reporter, which allows you to track time based on your Outlook appointments.

With a system that is so easy to use, time management and reporting will no longer be a problem for office staff. They can even integrate their own schedules in it to have an even more simplified and personalized agenda.

Another benefit of having a familiar but enhanced time tracking tool is its ability to produce standardized reports. With the same report formats for everyone, team leaders and department heads will have an easier time reading, sorting out, and assessing all the reports submitted to them.

As for employees who are always out of the office doing field work, a mobile version of this system will be very convenient. With a mobile platform, employees can access the system and update their schedules whenever it suits them and wherever they are. Even if you don’t have an internet connection TimeSheet Reporter allows you to report your hours via your Outlook calendar. The system will then just automatically synchronize the next time you are online.

And to further improve operations, the system should also be able to integrate data with vital company systems such as ERP, CRM and other systems. With such integration to key systems, business processes becomes faster and company-wide reports will be a lot more comprehensive and substantial, as well as easier to make.

All these features using a simple and well-known program such as the Microsoft Outlook Calendar and enhanced with supplemental time tracking software such as TimeSheet Reporter will no doubt greatly improve the overall efficiency of your business organization.