Today, businesses are constantly looking for ways to increase their efficiency and productivity in order to survive in rapidly changing and competitive markets. In this context, workflow efficiency, which is often neglected, is of great importance. Making the workflow more efficient is an opportunity for businesses to increase efficiency and achieve goals. On the other hand, an efficient workflow is the key to building healthy relationships with customers and being a successful and sustainable business. It is critical to understand, monitor and improve workflow efficiency to ensure that customers are satisfied with service and product delivery and to achieve long-term success. What is Workflow Efficiency? Workflow efficiency indicates the time actively spent from the beginning to the end of a job, the effectiveness in the business process. This concept is inspired by the Lean philosophy, whose goal is to identify and reduce waste. An efficient workflow leads to better quality results, minimising wasted time, resources and effort. So, from a different perspective, it works in harmony with the goals of lean production. What are the Factors that Make Workflow Inefficient? Regardless of the sector, size and number of employees of a business, waste is one of the biggest obstacles to the efficiency of the processes. According to Lean, there are 7 wastes and these forms of waste are the main reason why workflows are inefficient. Processes that do not create added value According to Lean, any process that does not create value is inefficient and wasteful. Identifying the activities in a workflow that do and do not create added value is necessary to understand where the bottlenecks are and to take measures. Poor Communication Poor information sharing and communication throughout the organisation leads to delays in business processes and misunderstandings. Strengthening communication is one way to eliminate a factor that creates inefficiency. Multitasking Multitasking increases the workload on teams and they are not as focused on the task at hand. Keeping the number of work in progress under control and avoiding multitasking improves delivery times and increases the efficiency of the workflow. Repetitive and Manual Processes Repetitive and manually executed processes every day cause employees to waste time. Automating these processes significantly improves workflow. What are the Ways to Increase Workflow Efficiency? There are some methods you can apply to maximise workflow efficiency in your business. With these methods, you can improve your existing workflow and greatly increase its efficiency. Here are x ways to improve workflow efficiency; Evaluate the Current Workflow The first step in improving workflow is to evaluate your current processes. For the evaluation process to be effective, you can apply the Kanban method. Kanban allows you to visualise every stage of your work process from the beginning to the end. Thanks to this visualisation, you can understand how the flows in the process affect your productivity and determine what value-added or non-value-added activities are. Identify and Eliminate Waste Thanks to Kanban, you can recognise steps that do not add value to your process (such as waiting, overstock, defective products) and take steps to eliminate factors that hinder your workflow efficiency. Business Automation Increasing workflow efficiency is all about maximising productivity, and this must be done without creating additional stress for employees in the process. This is where workflow automation is important. It enables operational tasks to be carried out without the need for human intervention. Automating routine tasks not only frees up time for more strategic activities, but also reduces the possibility of human error. Streamline Communication Successful communication with team members and customers is the foundation of a successful business. Effectiveness in interacting with customers and employees is key to increasing operational efficiency. You should actively use and regularly encourage inter-team communication tools to strengthen collaboration and deepen relationships. Continuous Improvement Culture Continuous improvement is a business philosophy that always aims to do better. This approach aims to achieve better results by making small and incremental changes to processes, products and systems. Continuous improvement emphasises the need to identify and correct inefficiencies. At the same time, this culture encourages employees to look for ways to do their jobs better. In this way, productivity increases with continuous improvements. Continuous Improvement Software
