Manual Tasks Archives - Simply Flows

Best Time-Saving Tips for Success in Business

Throughout the workday, there are various tedious tasks a person has to do that consume a large amount of their time. A lot of other, high-value, tasks don’t get completed because there isn’t enough time in the day. Not to mention that people feel burnt-out from doing such mundane work. It is essential to find ways to save time because time is the only non renewable resource. Here are the best time-saving tips for success in business. They will help your organization be more productive and, ultimately, more successful.

Time is the only non renewable resource and we have very little of it. Therefore, wasting it on low-value work is unacceptable.

Time-Saving Benefits

Time savings can help increase productivity within a company. You open yourself up to getting more work done throughout the day by eliminating minuscule tasks. This, in turn, can lead to higher productivity and professional satisfaction in the workplace. People like to see that what they are doing is making a difference. Getting rid of low-value tasks means more time dedicated to growing the business, taking better care of the customers, and investing in employees’ professional development. This, in turn, would lead to higher customer loyalty and job satisfaction. Last but not least, saving time would contribute to increasing the organization’s value, revenues, and opportunities.

Time-Saving Tips

So, how does one increase time savings? There are various ways that a company can cut down on its inefficiencies. To start, a person has to stay organized. If someone’s files are all over, there is no way to get their work done efficiently. They would just be searching for what they need, which would take up a large portion of their day. It is essential to focus your attention to ensure you are doing high-quality work without making mistakes. Getting a job done before deadlines is crucial, so keeping an eye on the time and hitting those deadlines can increase time savings. To add, one other way to help save time is to avoid multitasking. Although it can be tempting to try and get everything done at once, it could be a distraction. Using these tips, one can become better at implementing time-saving techniques into their routine.

Automation: The Biggest Helper

The best way to increase time savings is through automation. Automation can eliminate tedious tasks, so that you do not have to waste time doing them yourself. You could create workflows for repetitive data entry and other manual data processing tasks. Then, you can focus your attention on your customers, for example, while the software does the tedious work. Something else, investing in automation to do your payroll is a huge time-saver. You get back that person whose only job is to work on the payroll tasks all day long. Business would grow, revenues would increase, and customers would be happier once you employ automation – the most significant time-saving helper a company can get.

Using the above time-saving tips for success, you can help your company cut back on inefficiencies and make more money. Automation is the biggest helper when it comes to saving time in a business. Automated workflows can eliminate tedious tasks and give you time back to grow your company and make it even more successful.

Simply Flows can save you an immense amount of time, check out our product.

The Best Productivity Tools for Business Interns

Most of us have been interns at some point in our lives. As an intern, you have to learn the ins and outs of a company in a very short period. Intern’s tasks can be very random and not always the most organized. It can be tough to stay on top of the non-streamlined work given to interns. Since many tasks are not set in stone, there could be confusion and miscommunication between the intern and their manager. To avoid such issues and to be efficient and productive, you can use many different tools. These are five of the best productivity tools for business interns.

1. Hootsuite

Companies give interns lots of busy work, such as making and managing posts. Hootsuite helps simplify the process of posting. Rather than switching between multiple apps and posting on each of them, Hootsuite keeps all social media in one place. This is a great productivity tool for business interns because you can schedule posts for weeks at a time so that you never forget to post. Also, the app aggregates your posts’ performance statistics from all social media accounts. It tells you what posts are doing well and which ones are not. Hootsuite is beneficial because it automates your posting schedule and gives you analytics to let you know if you should stick to your strategy or make changes.

2. Canva

One of my favorite tools to use as an intern is Canva. Canva is an app that allows you to create original art or edit photos using different templates. You can easily move, resize, or edit images to your liking and needs. If you had to create an image for emails, a new company logo, an icon, or a banner for social media, Canva is your go-to tool. This is one of the best productivity tools for business interns because of all the features. For example, one of the best features of Canva is its design tab. You are several templates to choose from and can make things from videos to business cards with the click of a button. You are given the creative freedom, as a business intern, to make items quickly and with ease, even if you are not a graphic designer. There is both a free and paid version for the application. People who want access to more features can get the paid version, but as an intern, Canva has a lot to offer with just the free version.

3. Trello

Trello is an excellent app for both project tracking and team collaboration. Through Trello, people can see their weekly tasks and update them according to their completion status, assignment, priority, etc. Interns can organize their workload into a manageable schedule to meet their deadlines. Trello allows other coworkers to see your schedule so that they know when you are busy. Managers can assign tasks to team members and manage workloads, deadlines, and project goals in Trello. This is a beneficial application that increases productivity. It helps you manage and schedule your tasks and communicate what you are currently working on with your team.

4. Grammarly

Grammarly is an essential productivity tool for business interns. Sometimes, you may not have time to go over all your grammatical and spelling errors when writing something. That’s what Grammarly is for. This application catches the majority of mistakes that you have made in a piece of writing. Whether it is a simple comma error or a passage with passive voice, Grammarly tells you where the issues are and gives you suggestions on how to fix them. This is vital for business interns, so emails, letters, presentation slides, and other documents look and sound professional.

5. PomoDone

PomoDone is very helpful with time management. You use a clock to determine how much time you spend on specific assignments. For example, you can schedule yourself to work for 45 minutes straight, then take a 15-minute break to recharge. This will motivate you to focus on your current task and get as much done as possible before the break. It will also prevent you from getting distracted from your tasks since you know you will be stepping away from your work in a short time. PomoDone is a valuable productivity tool for business interns.

Knowing these tools will not only give you a leg up at your internship but at a future job as well. Increasing your productivity as an intern will leave a significant mark on the company. They will be impressed with your work, which will contribute to you performing well in future jobs. Having systems for organizing, correcting, and editing work is vital in the business world, and understanding how to use them can help you be more competitive as a company.

Simply Flows is an application created to help with workplace productivity and efficiency. Click here to read another one of our blogs about productivity in the workplace.

Errors from Manual Data Entry and How to Avoid Them

Everybody makes mistakes; we’re only human. When entering data into an excel file or on paperwork, there is always a possibility for an error. Although not intentional, these errors could have severe repercussions for the person who made them and for the company. A person never means to harm but nonetheless they may cause huge problems. Let’s examine the most common types of human errors caused by manual data entry and what we can do to avoid them.

human errors caused by manual data entry

Common Types of Human Errors

Human error is unpredictable and there are various kinds of mistakes that can happen in the workplace. One type of error is a slip. A slip is when you do something by accident or unintentionally. For example, if a person were to put a file in the wrong folder, this would be a slip. A lapse is another common type of human error. This is when you forget to do or finish a task. The severity of the potential problem is dependent on the importance of the job. In addition, mistakes are human errors where people fail at making proper decisions. When tasked with deciding between further negotiating a deal or accepting an offer, a person could choose the wrong option and make a mistake.

Reason for Errors

There are many reasons for such errors to occur. Some people may not care about the repercussions of their actions. They may become too comfortable and even overconfident and neglect caution when they are doing their work.

Another cause of human error is distractions. Offices provide endless distractions with their open floor plans, constant buzz, phones ringing, and people stopping by each other’s desks. On the other hand, working from home may not be ideal either, if you share a small space with young children, barking dogs, or loud family members.

If a person is tired, stressed, overwhelmed, or working too fast, this also leaves room for error.

Finally, one of the significant reasons for error is inadequate training. Without enough experience and training, people will make more mistakes.

Repercussions from Errors

Human errors can be mild or very serious, depending on the gravity of the consequences. Some repercussions for milder issues could be reprimanding the employee and ensuring they see their mistake, so it does not happen again. However, more serious errors may have severe repercussions.

For example, if an accountant were to add an extra three 0’s to the end of a statement, saying they are reporting for 100,000,000 instead of 100,000, this would be a severe issue. The company could incur fines or other penalties by the authorities, and the employee may lose their job.

Reporting incorrect student data to the state may result in terminated funding for an educational organization. This is another example of how problematic human errors could be. They may have been unintentional, but may still cause a lot of trouble for the organization.

Ways to Prevent

To prevent errors, businesses must train their employees well. Without proper training and data integrity procedures in place, knowledge workers will make significant mistakes more often. Companies must administer refresher courses throughout the year, so people continue to follow data integrity best practices.

Enforcing impossible deadlines is a sure invitation to a lot of errors. Planning ahead and allowing enough time for employees to complete and check their work before they submit is a must.

A company must also have a plan in place for finding and fixing issues. Employees need access to tools to avoid errors altogether or make them easier to discover and fix. There are certain best practices that significantly reduce errors and improve the quality of a product or service. For example, having a backup of the data, performing regular audits, and employing automation are some examples of such practices.

And last but not least, when you know you have important data to work with, it is best not to rush, but to relax and to get a good night’s rest. Schedule your most demanding pieces of work for when you can limit the distractions to a minimum.

As stated, human errors are inevitable. You can not prevent people from messing up when doing work manually. There will always be a time when someone slips up and makes a mistake – large or small. However, there are automation tools that can help. Applications like Simply Flows can help eradicate manual data entry errors and help your company run efficiently.

Time wasted on repetitive tasks is over 40 percent!

A study found that the time wasted on repetitive tasks that could be automated is over 40 percent. Most of those are mundane tasks like data entry, copy-pasting from one application to another, and reporting. Half of them believe that is a poor use of their skills and getting in the way of doing their main job.

Automation Anywhere performed a global study in the fall of 2019. The research included data from 10,500 interviews with office workers from 11 countries around the world.

What were the top takeaways from the research?

Knowledge workers waste over 40% of their time on manual digital administrative processes.
Data entry is the most detested manual task.
Over 75% believe spending time on tasks that could be automated is a poor use of their skills.

The most detested manual tasks?

Data entry
Email
Filing documents
Compiling reports
Managing invoices

Time wasted on repetitive tasks is over 40 percent

Organizations need to take action. Indeed, 87% of the surveyed office workers believe their company should take action to automate mundane processes. 85% find a company investing in automation more attractive. And more than half, 55%, would leave their current employer if the burden of manual work becomes too high.

Not surprisingly, women spend more time on manual administrative tasks – 3.4 hours, compared to 2.8 hours for men.

To conclude, the time wasted on repetitive tasks is over 40%. That hurts employees’ job satisfaction and morale. For employers, that means wasting money, losing high-skilled people, and missing on opportunities to grow and innovate.

Many cloud apps used by businesses nowadays

Data from a study by Blissfully shows that small businesses use 40 SaaS apps on average. That number gets to 203 apps for companies with over 1,000 employees. Indeed, businesses use way too many cloud apps nowadays. This is partly due to the IT decentralization. Departments, teams, and even individuals choose separate tools for their needs. The result is a variety of apps. And most of them are not connected with each other.

More apps = more inefficiencies

The bigger the number of apps, the more opportunities for inefficiencies. Each application has its own databases and workflows. Data must ‘move’ through different places to assist with decision-making and other business needs. Therefore employees get more and more trapped into manually and repeatedly transferring data between different applications. The cost is high. A lot of energy is spent on busywork, instead of on high-value work. Not to mention all the mistakes people make while manually processing data.

Data silos

The more cloud applications a company uses, the more opportunities for silos of data. Since data is stored in each cloud app’s databases, it easily becomes segmented. Even though some integrations between applications do exist, the reality is that apps rarely ‘talk’ with each other. Therefore, often times employees need to manually piece together data from different sources for their analytics, reporting, or business needs. Silos of data hinder business analytics initiatives and may hide valuable insights from being uncovered.

Best of breed

Teams and individuals opt for the ‘best of breed’ approach, rather than the ‘best of suite’. Indeed, this helps with flexibility and independence but it has its drawbacks when it comes to connectivity, integrations, and reporting.
As organizations continue adopting more and more cloud applications, the need of connecting their apps and moving data between them will steadily rise.

Find out how Simply Flows can help. We can make the data flow seamlessly between your cloud apps. That’s right, no more data silos and no more manual transfers of data between your applications.

Fixing data errors takes 30 percent of the day

We all make errors. Most of the time when we manually enter data or copy-paste information between systems, we make mistakes. Actually, such errors are unavoidable because humans are not good at repetitive tasks. On one hand, we easily lose focus or get carried away in thoughts. On another, we hate such mundane work and rarely give it our all. We all have been there and know how easy it is to do a wrong entry, to paste data twice, or to mess up a number. Later on, we need to go back, find, and correct the mistakes we’ve made. We can imagine how big of a time-sucker that is for the business. Indeed, a study found that fixing data errors could take up to thirty percent of the day.

Gartner discovered that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can save 25,000 hours in a year.

The average amount of avoidable rework in accounting departments can take up to thirty percent of the day. This equates to savings of 25,000 hours or $878,000 per year for an organization with 40 full-time accountants.

A Gartner study shared these findings back in 2019. Gartner’s analysts interviewed over 150 chief accountant officers. Also, they gathered data of the RPA adoption at those companies.

Automate to eliminate data errors

Apparently, fixing data errors is a big problem for organizations. The good news is that there is a solution for it – process automation. When the data processes are automated, errors are eliminated. Additionally, organizations save a lot of time and money by not paying employees for such tasks. Knowledge workers are able to focus on high-value work. Once unburdened, people have time to be creative and contribute to the company’s innovation. An added benefit is that job satisfaction goes up and turnover goes down when employees feel that their skills are better utilized. And last but not least, an organization can employ RPA without breaking the bank!

Do you need help with automating any of your processes? Connect with us or have a look at our product page.

Category Archives: Manual Tasks