Streamlining and reducing the costs of your processes will allow you to better optimise time and money in your company. So, by simplifying these processes, you will reduce the number of working hours needed to meet your objectives. In addition, thanks to technological advances, telecommuting is possible, which promotes much more flexible working hours and the company will have a much larger workspace to run the business. So, time and money are today’s protagonists.
Time to enjoy life. Without a doubt, nowadays we live in a world in which time is precious and we cannot waste it. And both employers and legal teams belong to the group of those who have little time and are always busy solving workloads and reviewing documents and contracts. They spend their most valuable time on repetitive tasks, non-essential activities, which does not help them to improve their productivity, but rather the opposite. That is why digitised and automated management is so important to them.
Spending on what really matters. As companies are implementing technology, instead of spending their time managing certain monotonous tasks or reviewing data stored on paper, they prefer to opt for the latest software and legal outsourcing services that reduce the cost of many time-consuming processes. So we can say that technology is definitely becoming the most cost-effective solution to management problems.
Traditional administrative processes, such as case tracking or organising billing and human record keeping, could be serious if done manually, as they are labour-intensive and, unfortunately, not billable. Therefore, automating these manual tasks, digitising records and using cloud-based technology can substantially improve your company’s efficiency and productivity. If you let technology take care of the basic but most important tasks, you won’t have to worry about doing all the red tape yourself, and you will be able to focus on priorities and better connect with your customers. It will also allow you to gain more visibility, increase your team’s performance, increase revenue and competitive advantage.
So, with the right tools, almost any process can be automated and the technology is ready for you to use. How?
- Keep track of your time on the go with a time-management application
It is really important to keep accurate track of the time you spend on tasks, but it is often time-consuming and laborious. Counting time all at once at the end of the day, or even at the end of the week, might seem like time saved, but it is not really the case, quite the opposite, as it is very likely that you will not remember everything, and therefore not account for all the work done. But for that, a modern timekeeping system has arrived that is the only way to ensure that you are accurately accounting for every minute of potentially billable time and billing your customers fairly.
In the same way, if instead of managing your time with the application you try to do it on paper or in a spreadsheet, you will waste much more time. So the solution is time tracking applications such as Time Master, Hours Tracker and iKeepTime, or solutions with analytics that allow detailed tracking of employee activity and time spent on each project, such as Bounsel. Moreover, these apps can even be used on our mobile phones, which we always carry with us, and will allow us to record the working time for each client more quickly and easily. And the best thing is that many of them integrate directly with the usual billing systems.
- Automate the scheduling of your meetings
What about meetings? Well, they are often essential, but I’m sure we’d all prefer to have fewer of them. And what is the worst thing about all these meetings? Programming them. Who hasn’t ever been caught in an endless back and forth of emails, patiently negotiating the best date and time to make an appointment?
Now, by automating your meetings, you can make better and more efficient use of the time it takes you to answer all those emails and calls. The best event scheduling applications in your calendar allow you to set up a number of possible time slots and then invite attendees to select the times that work best for them. Other options with more features, such as Calendly, integrate directly into your calendar and allow those looking for an appointment with you to choose a slot from your available times.
- Access your files anywhere via cloud storage
We have already talked about the organisation of your content in a previous article, but we would like to remind you that, the storage platforms Cloud computing has proven to be not only 100% secure, but also a great efficiency enhancer for a number of reasons: documents are accessible from anywhere and you only need an internet connection, giving you flexibility when you are at work. Therefore, this cloud storage also allows you to share documents almost instantly with colleagues or anyone else to improve collaboration (everyone can work on a document and all changes are recorded and updated in real time). As far as we can tell, this digital cloud storage is much more secure than storing documents in your office with filing cabinets full of papers, as the first option even saves your backups and encryption.
- Use digital dictation software
You may think that digital dictation software can’t be very useful, but that’s not true. If you have a lot of meetings during the course of the day and have to be constantly on the move, send emails, dictate messages and travel on business trips, this software can save you a lot of time. So, if you take advantage of the latest in digital dictation software you can use tools that not only record what you say, but can also write it down and automatically store it in the cloud storage tools of your choice. Automatic speech recognition tools, such as Dragon and Trint, can dramatically increase productivity, as speaking is much faster than typing and these solutions will do everything to convert your speech into written text, meaning you would only have to revise it instead of starting to write from scratch.
When you work more than 40 hours a week, you have to find realistic solutions to use your time more efficiently. This will help you to feel satisfied at work and lead a much healthier and more relaxed lifestyle.
