Efficient and client-focused businesses are formed through creativity, ingenuity, and ambition. When it comes to serving the industry you work in, ambition pushes you to reevaluate how to improve your service; creativity and ingenuity guide the path to better using your skills to do so. Yet, lack of time is often a barrier to examining how we can use our time to learn, grow, and scale our business. Let’s examine how to win back time in order to make business more profitable and work more interesting.
Use New Technology to Improve Systems
Let’s start with the Social Security Disability (SSD) industry to see how it uses technology to improve systems, as well as other industries. The Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), for example, has done a great job of incorporating technology into process, leading to an improvement in managing large files. Other industries have used new technology to better serve their customers, such as Amazon, who changed online purchasing and delivery through improved technology.
Personally, I worked to incorporate technology in order to streamline purchasing and delivery options for my clients. Instead of a slow back-and-forth, extended ordering system, clients in need of consulting or brief writing can quickly order one of my services online, receive an invoice and receipt immediately, and expect their purchased product within 10 business days (or 7 business days, if ordering RUSH options).
Consider new options for your business: what technology can you employ to make business more efficient? What changes can be made to serve clients better, resulting in higher satisfaction and increased business overall? Is there an unnecessary bottleneck in your system that can be alleviated?
Streamlined Processes Are More Profitable
Utilizing technology is profitable. Since I started streamlining my business’ ordering and delivery process, outsourcing specialized work, and targeting assistance for work I cannot or should not be doing, I have been freed up to focus on the work that I truly enjoy—providing Social Security Disability representatives and individuals with helpful content, analysis, and customer service.
Other Social Security Disability professionals are incorporating similar streamlined processes as well, such as working with virtual personal assistants, paralegals, SSD brief writers, and training. In addition to brief writing, professionals can train new employees or provide refreshers for SSD firm staff, allowing the firm’s most productive employees to continue producing rather than training.
Scale Your Skills
Once you have an efficient, streamlined, and profitable business, it is time to scale. This can be an exciting process as you build on the skills you already possess. Consider your strongest skills and how they can benefit the growth of your business. Which tasks do you enjoy the most—and which tasks can you delegate? What new products and/or services do your clients need that you could provide?