Improving the efficiency of your online business is one of the best ways to boost productivity, sales performance, team morale, and client retention, as well as make your life as a business leader far easier.

Naturally, as with anything that makes a huge impact on your company, improving the efficiency of your company can be incredibly difficult. Pinpointing the areas which need improving can be hard, especially if you are used to your daily habits and can’t spot any obvious flaws in your routine.

Improving efficiency can be as simple as offloading some time-consuming tasks which take up too much of your day – such as hosting meetings, helping your team with their projects, talking to clients, or filing your tax returns.

Although you might think performing all these tasks yourself will save your business money, it is often a false economy. By outsourcing tasks that others can do just as well, you free yourself up to complete other jobs that only you can perform.

To help you find more avenues that might improve your internal efficiency, here are three ways to make your online business more efficient:

Manage your cloud applications properly

Cloud management is one of the biggest hurdles that need to be overcome when running an online business. If you have a team that regularly relies on various cloud applications and third-party contractors who collaborate with you through cloud platforms, keeping track of your core infrastructure can be tricky.

Therefore, investing in an API gateway SaaS is so vital. It enables you to use, manage and expand your cloud usage more safely and efficiently. You don’t have to endure the headache of finding different passwords, constantly opening and closing different applications, and worrying about who has visibility over what files.

Keep your full-time team as small as possible

It might sound strange to downsize when you are trying to improve efficiency, but keeping your team size as manageable as possible is crucial to make your business as manageable as possible.

Having a large in-house team means that a lack of productivity can be lost amongst the noise, and pinpointing issues can take a long time.

What’s more, there are many tasks that can be performed by automated software or a single employee who has been trained and paid to handle the added work.

After all, the more employees you have, the more money you are directing away from other crucial areas – such as client acquisition. You can always increase the size of your team with freelancers when necessary and then scale down again afterward.

Limit meetings and other interruptions

You would be amazed how quickly your schedule can be filled up with hours of tasks that give you no demonstrable benefits as a business owner.

These include having to lead meetings that senior employees could just as well manage, being constantly interrupted by team members, clients, contractors, or freelancers seeking your attention, or answering emails and calls which take hours to complete.

Instead, try to be strict with your time. These tasks are all important for your business, but assistants or other senior employees can complete them. You can focus on bigger-picture tasks by freeing up your daily schedule.