What Are Your Company's 2023 Resolutions?

December 29, 2022 | Kyle Kopp

It is about this time every year that we all start taking that deep, hard look at ourselves in a mirror and deciding how and where we ‘re going to make some improvements.  We just survived the gauntlet of Halloween candy, Thanksgiving leftovers and Holiday parties and now have nine months to do something productive before we hit the same three headed monster next year.

Statista has released their most common New Year’s Resolutions heading in 2023, and most of them seem to be a cut and paste copy of last year’s goals (and the year before’s and the year before that’s and so on and so forth).  But we at Advanced Office have decided these resolutions are not that far off from similar improvements many of our customers have been talking about making in their business operations for the past several years as well.  So, we wanted to take a moment to rethink these goals in business terms and outline how you might go about actually taking action in 2023 to meet them.

 

1) Exercise more…..

This is always the most common resolution, no matter the year.  We’ve just spent months (or years) eating and drinking too much and now those jeans from our mid-twenties are snugger than they always used to be, meaning you’ve got to use your daughter’s hairband and loop it through the buttonhole and onto the button to get them “on”.  So, what are you going to do?  Hit the treadmill, the weights, and the mat to do more physically to combat the reality of metabolism vs. aging. 

But how about with your business?  Well, are you as productive as you truly need to be?  We’re seeing a new segment in office environments that has never really been represented well to date: the lite production space.  These are office settings where they’re using a traditional copier or multi-function device, but the amount of volume they’re pushing through it is close to the true production space.  But they’re not a production print house, so it wouldn’t make sense to bring in a true production device for what they’re doing.  This is where a lite production model, like the Canon C270 series, would allow them to match the volume of their printing needs with an engine truly meant to handle it, while at the same time decreasing the monthly cost of running that volume without needing to learn how to navigate a complicated production machine.  It’s a perfect marriage between the production speed and the mulit-function ease of use.

 

2) Eat healthier….

This is the partner in crime of our first resolution.  If you’re going to increase productivity, you want to avoid creating more wasteful consumption as an unintended byproduct.  If you start burning 1200 calories a day only to ingest 1500 more than before, you’re going to find yourself going in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, our Eco Excellence status means that we have many available ways that we can help you reduce your carbon footprint, even as you start to increase your overall production output.  Whether it’s recycling programs for your empty toner cartridges to keep them from landfills, tree replacement opportunities to offset your paper consumption or automation programs to manage your supply ordering patterns so you don’t accidentally throw out supplies that still have use in them, we can help you meet your target for limiting wastefulness resulting from your printing patterns.

 

3) Lose weight….

The trifecta is now complete.  You want to work out more and eat healthier all for primary purpose of losing that extra weight.  Lightening your load increases your feeling of nimbleness, freedom, and willingness to take on even more.  What would be the point of goal one and goal two if they didn’t help you achieve goal three?!

But where is that “weight” in your business operation?  How about starting with all that paper your storing?  You know what I’m talking about; those ancient metal file cabinets in the copy room or lining the hallways in between work areas.  You don’t need those anymore.  We can help digitize your storage with Document Management tools like DocuWare.  Even better, we can implement smart indexing so that once your documents are “filed away” they will be easier than ever to find when needed, from anywhere your team can access the internet.  You can even bypass the physical printing process all together and store your documents directly when they’re still in their electronic phase as a PDF, e-mail, or text file.  Now just think of all that extra space you’ll have once those rusting file cabinets are gone.

 

4) Save more money….

It’s surprising this one isn’t any higher on the list.  We all want to save more money, clearly.  More money means more security, more opportunity and, well, more money!

This, of course, isn’t always easy to do in the business world.  The only realistic way to save more money is to increase your revenue and/or reduce your costs; but this second one might not be as obvious on its face.  Reducing your costs means limiting your spend, but ALSO finding ways to increase the value of what your spending on.  If you could get five times the result out of one of your departments, without increasing your cost by hiring more people, then you’ve saved more money on the increase in productivity.  Using the solution we already discussed, DocuWare, you can automate a significant portion of your daily tasks in departments like Accounts Payable and Human Resources, significantly increasing the productivity of those teams.  Simply by scanning an invoice, auto indexing can file, submit for payment approval and even pre-fill a check run, eliminating the manual process that might take up most of your employees’ day.  Similarly, with HR you can automate most of your onboarding process and free up your staff’s time to focus on other, more important aspects, like payroll.  And this tool isn’t restricted to these two departments.  There are a myriad of uses that can be customized for each department no matter what sort of business you’re in.

 

5) Spend more time with family and friends….

We all want to spend more time with our families, right?  Right? 

In our business operation, this goes hand in hand with our previous discussion.  By eliminating the unnecessary manual tasks with Document Workflow Solutions and automation, you can free up an immense amount of time for other things on your to do lists.  Or, you know, spend time with your family if that’s really what you want.

 

6) Spend less time on social media……

Hey, that’s on you.  Put.  Down.  The Tic Tok.

 

7) Reduce stress on the job…..

I feel like I’m on repeat.  Document.  Managed.  Workflow.  Eliminate the unnecessary actions you take that can be automated.  Why spend time working on things you don’t have to do manually anymore.  This is, after all, 2023.   Welcome to the future.

 

8) Reduce spending on living expenses….

Not unlike the general “save more money”, reducing costs wherever possible is a key step to reducing stress and securing your financial position.  So, you use an app to find the cheaper gas prices, you buy the store brand product over the big-name brand, or you downsize the vacation to the tropics for a weekend at the waterpark a few towns over.  But where can you reduce your daily operating expenses at work that doesn’t involve layoffs or scaling back on the quality of your product?

We talked about improving efficiency, but there are always ways that you can reduce your overall costs.   Our Certified Pre-Owned equipment option can put state-of-the-art devices in place for you at a fraction of the cost for brand new gear through our strategic partnerships with end of lease equipment sources.  Our expert teams can provide in depth analysis of your current printing situations and help you identify ways to right source your set up so that you can eliminate unnecessary machines or identify devices that are more expensive for you to use and route the bulk of your print jobs to alternative, more cost-effective machines.  Expand your offerings through our production devices and increase your streams of revenue through additional client offerings or reduce your spend with vendors by bringing elements in house to manage yourself.  This is one of our greatest specialties, helping you identify how you can improve your business and do so with the less financial impact to your operation.

What’s your companies’ resolutions heading into 2023?  I bet if we get a chance to talk about them, there’s are a number of ways we can help you get there.