How to plan and manage operational tasks?

Operating a business can be a daunting task. It requires attention to detail and a multi-faceted approach to ensure all operations are running smoothly. With the help of technology, streamlining operational tasks for businesses has become much easier.

The key is to identify the essential tasks that can be automated and outsource specific services to experts. By taking a proactive approach to streamlining these tasks, small businesses can become more efficient, reduce costs, and ultimately increase revenue.

This article will explore some of the most effective methods for streamlining the jobs for businesses, from automation and outsourcing to process optimization and team collaboration.

What Is An Operational Task?

An operational task is an activity that needs to be completed to run your business. Examples of operational tasks include accounting, sales, marketing, SEO, payroll, and customer support. They are necessary to run your business, but they don’t create additional value. They are important because they help you to track, measure and manage critical business metrics.

They include but aren’t limited to: managing your marketing campaigns, setting up metrics for your sales team, tracking your leads, and managing customer support requests. With their help, you can assess your business’s current performance and make necessary adjustments to the part of the operations to increase the efficiency of the processes.

For example, if you notice that your SEO isn’t producing enough leads, you can strategically adjust your SEO strategy. Hiring new employees and onboarding them is an operational task because it is necessary to ensure your team has the right skill set, but it doesn’t directly impact your sales. Operational tasks are often overlooked by small business owners in the race to push revenue, but they are just as important as revenue-driving activities.

The key to successful management of these tasks lies in identifying which ones are essential and can be automated, outsourced, or which ones require your direct attention. Identifying operational tasks and managing them effectively will help you to streamline your business and focus on generating revenue.

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Why Do You Need Operational Tasks?

Operational tasks help small businesses become more efficient by increasing productivity and decreasing costs. The more efficient your business becomes, the more money you can reinvest in your company’s growth instead of spending it on operational costs.

According to a monday.com poll, 54% of employees spend five or more hours each week on monotonous activities that don’t call for much innovation. It takes 10 or more hours for 16%. The greatest time thief is data entry, with approximately one-fourth of respondents citing data input chores as their top time wasters.

Operational tasks provide the framework for the organization to achieve its business goals. These tasks are both important and time-consuming, and they are the backbone of any organization. Without proper management, they can easily become overwhelming, which can lead to missed deadlines, poor communication, and overlooked opportunities.

It’s important to track and manage metrics to determine where you can optimize the tasks to reduce costs and increase productivity. Operations are used to maintain and preserve a system rather than to create something new. For instance, administrative duties are activities in a firm. Eating, sleeping, and paying the monthly utility bill are all activities that people do. Projects, on the other hand, are short-term efforts that aim to produce a certain outcome. The goal of operations is to keep things functioning. They are static and repetitious.

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How To Efficiently Manage Important Operational Tasks?

There are a few different ways to effectively manage operational tasks. First, you need to understand which of these tasks are most important to your business. Once you understand the tasks that need to be managed, you can begin to delegate specific tasks to employees.

For example, you can delegate the management and scope of your marketing campaigns to a marketing manager and the management of customer support to a customer service manager. You also need to clearly define the goals and metrics of each of these tasks to understand if they’re being managed effectively.

For example, your marketing manager needs to understand their role in growing your leads. By setting goals and metrics for each task, you can effectively manage those tasks and measure their efficiency.

Next, take a look at each task and ask yourself:

“Is this task absolutely essential for the smooth operation of my business?”

If it is, make sure you have a system in place to ensure you’re managing it effectively. If it’s not essential for the operation of your business, cut it off your daily to-do list. Having a clear understanding of which tasks are essential will help you to prioritize and manage them more efficiently.

Manage operational tasks effectively

What Are Some Examples Of Operational Tasks?

There are many different types of tasks that business owners need to manage on a daily basis.

Marketing

Marketing is one of the most important tasks because it helps you grow your leads and ultimately your sales.

For example, you can track the number of leads generated from your marketing campaigns to determine if you need to make any adjustments or if certain campaigns are underperforming. Marketing tasks include blogging, creating social media content, creating an email marketing campaign, and setting up paid ads.

Sales

Sales is another important aspect of operations because it helps you close more deals. You can track the number of deals closed and forecast future revenue by monitoring the number of deals currently in the pipeline.

Strategy

This includes reviewing your business plan, conducting a SWOT analysis, and reviewing data to identify areas for improvement.

Finance

This includes generating financial projections and managing your cash flow.

This includes hiring and onboarding employees, managing employees’ performance, and creating employee handbooks.

Customer service

This includes responding to customer inquiries and managing customer feedback.

What Are the Three Operational Plans?

Three operational plans

The three operational plans are automation, outsourcing, and process optimization.

Automation

Automation is a great strategy for managing tasks. It involves using technology to simplify and speed up repetitive tasks. For example, using a CRM to manage leads, a project management tool to manage tasks, and a business email service to communicate with customers.

Outsourcing

Another strategy for managing is outsourcing. This involves hiring external parties to handle certain tasks, such as customer service or marketing, so that your team can focus on generating revenue.

Optimization

The third strategy for managing operational tasks is process optimization. This involves reviewing common tasks to see if they can be simplified or improved through task management.

What Is Operational Due Diligence?

Operational due diligence refers to the process of thoroughly examining an operational plan before making the decision to implement it. For example, before hiring a new team member, you need to make sure that they have the right skill set and are capable of performing the right tasks.

This process ensures that you’re hiring the right people for the right job and aren’t just hiring anyone. When it comes to outsourcing, you need to do a thorough analysis of the costs and benefits of outsourcing specific tasks. For example, you want to make sure that outsourcing customer support is worth the costs because you won’t generate any revenue from this operational task.

Conclusion

Operational tasks are important because they help you to track, measure, and manage critical business metrics. By implementing operational plans, you can increase efficiency and reduce costs. With the help of technology and operational plans, streamlining these tasks for small businesses has become easier.

They are essential for the day-to-day running of any business, but they can also be time-consuming and overwhelming.

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Suneedh Kumar

I am an engineer with a keen interest in technology and a passion for growth-hacking. I’ve covered technology of all shapes and sizes, and reviewed everything from software to hardware. Prior to writing for TimeTrack, I have written for Lulu, DoorDash and many more brands.