Productivity Archives - Page 2 of 2

Productivity vs. Efficiency: Which is More Important?

When working, you know that it is important to be both productive and efficient. However, do you know the difference between productivity vs. efficiency? It is essential to understand that they do not mean the same thing. Knowing the difference between productivity and efficiency can help you better understand them and decide what occasions call for one vs. the other.

What are Productivity and Efficiency?

Before we delve into differences and similarities, let’s first define the two. Efficiency is the production of something without wasting a large number of products or time. It ensures that you produce high-quality products while only utilizing the necessary resources. Productivity is the measurement of how efficiently inputs, such as products and other components, can create multiple outputs for a company. In simpler terms, productivity determines how to create a product with little input wastes.

Differences

Although some people use productivity and efficiency interchangeably, the two are not synonymous. The effort put into a project is efficiency. A business tries to use the least amount of resources to get what they need done. Productivity is the physical amount of work that you can complete. It focuses on getting the job done with the current resources at the company’s disposal. Efficiency focuses more on the resources used to make a product, and productivity is more about how much work gets done in a period of time. Efficiency is a reactive process, which means its outcome results from a person’s effort. In contrast, productivity is proactive. You put in the work to create the most items in a short time interval.

Which is More Important?

Trick question! Both productivity and efficiency are vital to keeping a company strong and profitable. By adding together productivity and efficiency, you can get actual productivity within an organization. Some may say that productivity is more important than efficiency, but one can not exist without the other. If you’re making something for a company, you can do it efficiently so that it uses few resources but has a good quality. However, you also want to produce the most amount of products possible during that time. By combining productivity and efficiency, you can optimize fewer resources while still making more output for your business. Productivity vs. efficiency may have their differences, but together they create an optimal model for a company.

Knowing the differences between productivity vs. efficiency is just the first step to getting your business on track. Now, one must implement these practices into the workplace. By doing this, you will have lower operational costs, better utilization of resources, and increased profits for your company.

Check out our product to find out how you can increase efficiency and productivity within your organization.

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: Productivity