Microsoft Office: Time Management Makes Your Small Business Productive

In today’s business environment, corporate budgets are being reduced or staying stagnant. In order to control costs, many companies are following the mantra: “Do more with less.” However, productivity is required to increase. Easier said than done.

Several studies have found the following:
• The average employee wastes 17 hours per week due to inefficiencies. This translates to 40% of your workforce is unproductive.

• Employees waste several hours a week simply searching. Looking for missing files. Looking for a customer or lead record. Looking for answers. Asking questions. Looking for answers to their computer and software questions, etc.

• Every time an employee is interrupted, it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get back on track. This does not take into account the amount of time the interruption lasts.

• 68% of all sales are lost due to inefficient follow up processes
The bottom line is that all of these inefficient and unproductive items are costing time and money. How much money? A million dollar company can be wasting over $700,000 just because they are inefficient. If nothing else, if your business reduced the 68% of lost sales by ¼, revenue would increase by 150%.

Microsoft Office to the rescue
Your business is not the only one facing these challenges. 87% of U.S. businesses are currently looking for ways to be more efficient. If you leverage technology and software, you can work faster, work smarter and work predictably. If you are like 8 out of 10 U.S. businesses, Microsoft Office is on your computer. Your business has already purchased Microsoft Office, why not use it?

Microsoft Outlook Time Management Tips
Here are five (5) Microsoft Outlook tips that will help you manage your time immediately:
1. Use Outlook’s Tasks to keep track of your tasks and organize them by due dates, priorities, categories, etc.
a. Categories are very powerful and can help you group your tasks so you know what to focus on today.
b. To take this one step further, you can use Outlook to keep track of all tasks for a project. Including tasks assigned to others. All integrated and managed through Outlook. For those using Microsoft Project, you can even use Outlook to manage project tasks and to keep everything up to date and integrated.

2. Each morning, review the Task lists to see what is on the docket for the day. By simply dragging a task to your Outlook calendar you can allocate the time you need.

3. To adjust the time allocated, select the calendar item and you can just add time by dragging. Very simple.

4. Be sure to allocate blocks of time to review email, voicemail, etc. Also, if you have employees working for you. Allocate blocks of time so they can stop by with “I have a quick question” or “Need five minutes to ask you a question”.

5. Share your calendar with your team and/or employees. This way they can see when you will have time for them. If you have items that you do not want them to see, just mark the item as “Private”. Microsoft has several ways for you to accomplish this.

To learn more and to request free reports, go to www.keynetx.com/unlockmicrosoftoffice

To contact Michael Irving, send an email to: mirving@keynetx.com
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