What Does It Mean to Be Nimble?

When you hear the word “nimble,” what images does it conjure up for you? Nimble people move quickly and efficiently, with minimal wasted effort – and so do nimble companies. But even in today’s world of high-powered software solutions, many companies still have antiquated payroll methods dragging them down.

Offloading your payroll doesn’t always ensure efficiency. With some payroll companies you might have to get on the phone, get directed to the right contact person and then go through the entire payroll list with that person. The payroll company then gets the people paid  — and sends you a pile of paperwork that you can’t make head or tail of. You have to then input all that paper data to a spreadsheet or accounting program if you actually want to make use of it or analyze it. And if the data hasn’t been broken out properly, even basic analysis may prove impossible. You may even have to pay for a report that requires that data in a certain format.

If you want to stay nimble, make sure your payroll or HR outsource company gives you accessible online data broken down into formats that work for you, whether it’s job costing, departments, reporting, accounting (format), etc. You need to have a solid handle on your total labor costs to be as financially effective as possible.

For example, how much time did your people spend on project preparation? How many hours went into the manufacture of that 200-widget order?

Outsourcing all your reporting and payroll tasks can also slash labor costs dramatically. We recently took this burden off of a company that had supervisors going around collecting timesheets six days a week, while their shop spent hours dealing with old-fashioned punch cards instead of other much-needed tasks. Now they can simply “punch in” with swipe cards and upload field information through an iPhone app. That’s being nimble – and profitable.

Do you need to become more nimble? Acadia HR can help make it happen!

Dan Hettrich is the director of sales at Acadia HR located in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at dan@acadiahr.com or 512-745-2985.

About Jason Myers

Jason Myers is the editor-in-chief of the Texas Entrepreneur Network and can be reached at jason@txenetworks.com