“Productivity vs efficiency; which do you think is more important?“
A colleague asked me this the other day and I had to catch myself, because my initial response was:
“Aren’t they the same thing?“
That’s the problem – the words have become so overused and confused that they are almost taken to mean the exact same thing in casual conversation. There are, however, key differences between the two that you should know in order to correctly analyze the performance of something.
Simply put, productivity measures output over time whereas efficiency measures input versus output. Together they can tell you how quickly something is completed, the resources it takes to get there, and (through analysis) whether the whole thing is worth your investment.
There are also dangers associated with these metrics. For example, I tried to spend an hour every night working on one of many projects. Monday was playing guitar, Tuesday was physical drawing, Wednesday game development, Thursday digital drawing, Friday playing piano, and the weekend dealer’s choice.
Not only did I give up within a week and a half, but I couldn’t muster the motivation to do any work on any of my projects for weeks following. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the best productivity apps around; when you’re using productivity and efficiency as your goal, rather than the method to reach it, something will inevitably break underneath you.
Enterprise collaboration software is essential to any organization.
It’s the catalyst for hitting those important, internal targets that pave the way for long-term profitability and success.
But collaborating is far easier said than done – and especially for enterprise businesses.
In fact, 86% of employees and executives cite a lack of collaboration as the reason for the failures that have happened in their workplace.
Luckily, there’s a solution: Enterprise collaboration software.
If you’re new to enterprise collaboration software but still want to get your enterprise collaborating like pros, you’ve come to the right place.
In this incredibly-informative, super-streamlined Process Street article, you’ll learn the definition of enterprise collaboration software, find out the benefits of it, and discover the best software for enterprise-wide collaboration, depending on your needs.
At one point or another, many businesses reach a stage where they need to delegate some intensive processes to another provider.
This delegation, usually called Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), helps small businesses avoid hiring full-time teams to manage and measure the performance of different business processes. BPOs offer benefits from cost savings to a strong competitive edge, and they can help new and upcoming businesses grow more efficiently.
Delegating one or more business processes doesn’t come without risks, though.
For every function or process that a business outsources to an external provider, the more organizational information they potentially jeopardize. The greatest threats to BPO, chief among them hidden costs that come with outsourcing, can severely damage a business’s customer push-back and satisfaction rates.
To that end, let’s explore the main risks involved in BPO projects and how to mitigate them, as well as get a quick intro to BPO with specific examples and benefits.
Some workflow apps you might be using to help manage your processes require constant attention – reporting, updating, or having to contact other colleagues to get them to complete their section of the workflow.
These are interruptions, and according to Professor Gloria Marks from the University of California, with each interruption, there is an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds wasted to get back to the task.
Other workflows experience inefficiencies simply because your current processes take too long. Full stop.
The more time things take, the more work you have to do.
In this article, we’ll guide you through a series of tools which can help you create workflows, follow workflows, and automate workflows.
Joseph Juran, the Architect of Quality, paved the way for the active pursuit of quality in Business with the Juran Trilogy.
The Juran Trilogy redefined quality management; reducing chronic defects and the costs associated below a 20% industry expectation.
The Juran Trilogy has been shown to give benefits across multiple parameters, increasing productivity, reducing cycle-times, improving human safety, and reducing product failure rates – with a 80% reduction in some cases.
For us as Process Street, the Juran Trilogy is one of our favorite tools for improving business operations. It’s a straightforward methodology that brings results.
Learn how to apply the Juran Trilogy for your business, and improve the quality of operations. Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:
It’s important to understand the different change management models available.
Why?
For your business to survive, it will need to evolve. For it to evolve, you need to make changes. Without a change management model, the success of those changes is up to nothing more than hope and dumb luck.
I’ve already gone over how to form your own change management strategy, so for this post, I’ll outline everything you need to know about 8 proven change management models that will put your organization at the top of the food chain:
I lost $45,000 because I didn’t have a statement of work in place.
What makes it worse (or perhaps better?!) is that it wasn’t even my money.
It was my previous employer’s.
I was managing a website build for a big client and was under huge pressure to meet a tight deadline. So, as many do, I decided to start the project before the client signed the Statement of Work (SoW).
This was a big, expensive, mistake to make.
It cost an additional $45,000 to re-work parts of the build that the client had verbally approved, but hadn’t legally signed off.
Ouch.
(Despite what you might think, this isn’t the reason I don’t work there anymore!)
According to research, 37% of projects fail due to a lack of defined and approved project goals and objectives, which come with a Statement of Work (SoW). This causes around 80% of organizations to spend at least half their time on expensive rework.
“Not using a Statement of Work – SOW during the project initiation is a major cause of project failure” – 4PM, Statement of Work – SOW
But what is a Statement of Work (SoW) and how do you create one?
All will be revealed in this Process Street post, as we go through:
IT security processes need to be place in order for a company to securely run their operations. But what does that really entail? We cover all this and more in our comprehensive look at what IT security processes look like in different departments and organizations.
An employee feedback loop can be a great tool if you’re trying to improve the quality of your products or boost the satisfaction of your employees.
There are numerous benefits to gathering and utilizing feedback but there are also several key things to remember that will help you make your feedback loops as effective as possible.
We will look at the different types of feedback loops, how they can positively impact businesses, and the best practices for making them work the first time, every time.
Every business relies on different software applications to thrive in its niche or market. But if your business isn’t in tech, or if you don’t have any software development experience, odds are you’ll need to use pre-made software that doesn’t perfectly fit your business’s needs.
That is, of course, unless you write your own applications from scratch. But don’t you have to know a lot of programming languages or have coding experience to get the job done? Not with no code platforms.
Today, let’s explore what no code platforms are, how they work, and whether you should use a no code platform for your enterprise’s applications and software solutions.
