From Jonathan Corrie, CEO of Precursive (www.precursive.com)
Managing business capacity is an ongoing conundrum for organisations of all sizes but for tech startups, which operate in a constantly evolving and fast-moving environment, creating an agile workforce is critical to early-stage success. Skills need to be optimally deployed, but equally, employees and startup founders need ‘wiggle room’ capacity in order to achieve the best productivity and work-life balance.
That said, why is it that 85% of C-suite execs lack the tools needed to accurately measure, plan, track and forecast business capacity? By acting on instinct rather than intelligence, these organisations are blindly trying to plug resource and skills gaps without any sort of science. So what’s the solution?
OpsTech (operations tech) is now a vital back-office resource for businesses and enables internal skills discovery at a time of industry skills shortages. It’s also an area of business technology that has, until more recently, been overlooked amidst the furore of HRTech, FinTech and MarTech. Nevertheless, its value in overall business terms is just as critical.
Here’s three ways OpsTech can give your startup business a boost:
Agility From the Outset
Start as you mean to go on. By having a comprehensive and real-time view of your people, their skills, and your project and customer needs, business leaders can ensure the right people are put on the right projects at the right time. The upshot? OpsTech enables significant time and cost savings that will support your business during its pivotal early stages.
Unearth Hidden Skills
The majority of business leaders (70%) would immediately turn to people when trying to fix a capacity issue. It’s one of the biggest problems with business capacity planning today and it shows decision-makers are yet to realise that capacity gaps can only be solved by technology and a review of wider business processes. With OpsTech in place, business leaders can acquire complete visibility of their workforce, attaining a real-time view of their people and skillsets. This information alone can put pay to costly knee-jerk recruitment by unearthing previously hidden skills within the company’s existing workforce. No-one likes to spend when they don’t have to, and this is none truer than in the startup environment.
Strike the Right Utilisation Balance
Employees are happier and more productive when they have ‘wiggle room’ and are working at a little under maximum capacity (around 80% is ideal in productivity terms). Crucially, this also supports employee retention – a factor that is especially important in the startup scene where the loss of one skilled employee can leave a gaping hole in a company’s expertise.
On the flip side, a startup’s budgets are tight so if an employee’s output isn’t up to scratch and they’re being under-utilised, salary costs will quickly eat into profit margins. OpsTech takes the risk out of over and under-utilisation by ensuring capacity is accurately – and optimally – managed, both for the employee’s wellbeing and company profits.
