Why Time Tracking Is Essential For A Company’s Success

What is time tracking?

Time tracking refers to the process of recording and tracking the time effort invested in each task, project, or client. Over a period of time, organisations can use data-driven decisions as a tool to increase productivity through increasing the efficiency of delivery by better utilising resources and aligning workflows.

Why time tracking is important for an organisation

For any organisation, understanding your available resources, including people, technology, financial, etc. is essential for organisational success. The operational metrics used to measure the success and impact of these resources on your organisational performance allows a clear path to be outlined towards achieving business objectives, through not only creating transparency and accountability, but also the ability to inspect and adapt in a more agile way.

There is the frequent question of why do companies need time tracking when clients and projects are billed by project rather than by time. The answer to this goes much deeper than just time worked and what that equates to in terms of billing.

Time tracking as a productivity measure produces insights to determine the cost of delivering a piece of work and the impact this has on future projects. The data may uncover indicators such as potential areas of learning and development for staff, inefficiencies in workflows and even distraction of teams in their day-to-day work, which may lead to wasted time – which is arguably the most valuable resource in a services organisation.

Why is time keeping important for staff?

It’s important to recognise that capturing timesheets is quite a hassle at times. It is therefore vital that the objectives and benefits of the exercise are shared with staff. Time tracking should not be used as a micromanagement tool, but rather to provide guidance to make more informed decisions, based on the data.

The value this adds and the impact it has on the business needs to be made clear to staff. The optimisation of any process which results in time wastage directly affects the organisation’s financial and non-financial performance, as well as how this potentially translates to the financial gains of employees. Thus, if the company is doing well, employee incentives are directly affected.

What are the benefits of employee time tracking for business?

Time tracking supports company success through:

1. Collection of data to enable more informed decision making, directly impacting all areas of an organisation including areas of development for staff, planning and financial tracking of engagements.
2. Visibility and accountability of objectives and deliverables and the impediments to achieving these. These insights also assist employees in evaluating their priorities of where time is spent and potential reevaluation of priorities.
3. Identifying operational inefficiencies resulting in time wastage.

   Time tracking software like our Caseware Cloud Time enables simplified, automated billing through accounting software integration with Xero and Quickbooks. There are many benefits to be yielded from using software applications like Caseware Cloud Time, including the ability to identify, address and reduce wastage and inefficiencies, improve productivity, glean valuable insights, allocate resources more accurately and streamline workflows. With effective time management you create visibility and accountability to keep your team on track and ensure that resources are aligned towards increasing organisational productivity.

   Ultimately, efficiencies within an organisation are passed on to the clients whom you service, whether internal or external. To support the success of both the business and the clients serviced, internal processes need to be optimised for efficiency and productivity.

How To Make Your Team Collaborate More Effectively

What is collaboration?

Collaboration in the workplace has historically been seen as anytime where more than one staff member must interact or work together with other members to produce a specific outcome. This has traditionally happened using phone, email and in-person meetings, however with the availability of more online tools, both the channels and cadence of collaboration have changed.

Collaboration as a norm has extended beyond the primarily internal teams, to include external stakeholders like clients. In addition, remote working conditions have directly impacted how and when communication and collaboration happen.

In the past, communication and collaboration have been seen primarily as two separate concepts. With communication generally being seen as the exchange of information, where collaboration takes this one step further by advancing the state of a “product”. This perception, however, is antiquated and should no longer be observed.

Why effective team collaboration is important?

Creating an organisational environment that enables teams as well as external stakeholders, like clients, to work collaboratively is fundamental to generating business success. Without effective collaboration, businesses are likely to face challenges like poor communication, a lack of innovation, and inefficient workflows, which all hamper your business’s ability to meet its objectives.

As effective team collaboration plays such a pivotal role in influencing your organisation’s ability to succeed, fostering effective collaboration amongst your workforce must become a top priority. Adding to that, the contemporary world of work has evolved to include workspaces that have transformed from traditional office buildings to co-working spaces; and workforces that comprise freelancers, staff on rotational schedules, and hybrid teams of in-office and remote workers.

To create a work environment that fosters effective team collaboration, your business needs to reflect the developments and demands of the contemporary work world. So, in a world where work dynamics are continuously evolving, how can team collaboration be improved in the workplace?

The features of effective team collaboration

Collaboration cannot be isolated to only internal business stakeholders but should be extended to include clients and other external stakeholders. 3 of the core defining features of collaboration are:

Efficient systems and processes: this entails the use of standardised and automated systems and processes throughout your organisation, so that your team can execute tasks faster and with greater accuracy. Standardised processes provide your team with an established way of working while creating visibility across the organisation and supporting greater productivity.
This can be supported using automated systems that enable communication, delegation, and brainstorming, which are secure, always available, and independent of geography and internet browser platform or source.

Accountability: is supported when organisations employ systems and processes that assign responsibility for the execution of work tasks to your workforce. This enables collaboration by ensuring everyone is clear on who is responsible for what. With a clear understanding of each team member’s responsibilities, your team is able to work cohesively with each individual focused on executing the task assigned to them. Should issues like delays occur, they can easily be identified and addressed.

Communication: is a core element of effective collaboration because it involves informing your team of work expectations, priorities and responsibilities so that they are able to work towards specific and measurable goals. Effective communication enables collaboration by ensuring your team knows what to work on and when to work on it so that any bottlenecks can be addressed timeously.
Consider these key features as part of your organisational culture and implement systems that foster and support seamless collaboration and promote productivity through more effective collaboration.

How can team collaboration be improved in the workplace?

In the contemporary world of work, promoting collaboration in the workplace begins with using software that supports and enables effective team collaboration, such as Caseware Cloud. Due to the evolution of the work world, a lot of collaboration now tends to occur online and remotely. So, for your team to be able to collaborate better, you need a software that enables them to:

• automate work processes
• communicate and collaborate remotely with ease
• monitor and track output and productivity levels to maintain efficiency and productivity
• access a centralised cloud platform for engagement and documentation, that relevant staff are able to access as and when required

Effective team collaboration enables your workforce to work more efficiently and to be more productive. So, incorporate a software tool that supports collaboration, to help your team collaborate effectively and with ease.

Our Caseware Cloud platform supports organisations through a secure, cloud-based platform to achieve effective team collaboration by enabling streamlined, efficient, and centralised management of workflows.