How do you plan to maximize your productivity? No matter what your business is, you sure would be looking to make the most of the resources at your hand. And one of the best ways to do it is by having reports and summaries with you.

But how can reports and summaries help?

Each day matters in business. How you plan your day and how you execute it eventually determines how successful you are in the longer run.

And this is where reports and summaries help, as you can see all that you need to do every day, in one place.

For one, you would need to keep a periodic record of the progress of your business goals. Reports are a great way to do that. Know how daily progress has been. Note the recent developments. Keep track of employee progress. Keep a check on whether you are in alignment with your overall goals at all times.

Summaries, on the other hand, help you know the to-do tasks for the day. You can keep yourself updated at all times, and have better time management.

Related: Could The Traditional Sales Model Really Be Hurting Small Businesses?

How Can You Use Summaries and Reports To Get the Best Results?

Here is how you can use summaries to do more with your time.

1. Know the Sales That You Are Going to Make

Sales and Marketing teams can use summaries and reports to keep a tab of the sales that they are making with time. Each day, a new goal can be set. Enquire at whether Facebook and other social media sites are profitable for you. See if you are converting potential customers into real ones. And review your cash and profits margins daily.

Reports and summaries can help you know:

• Whether the sales margins are increasing
• Whether your marketing campaigns are yielding the results you need
• Check the daily tasks you need to do when it comes accomplishing your marketing goals

2. Check the Audience

The right strategy will also help you know if you are building on customer loyalty and improving brand image over time. You would be able to better understand your audience. This includes the ability to understand how customers are generally behaving. For instance, if you own a restaurant, you can use summaries and reports to understand the following.

• What are the typical ages of customers who normally visit your restaurant?
• Do your customers have a specific liking for something or share any common interest?
• What is the most popular food item?

You can then create summaries every day to check you are getting the reports you need. For instance, you might want to know if your customers love chocolate more – and if they do, you might want to introduce newer chocolate dishes.

3. Be Clear to the Requirements

Be clear as to what you need from your summaries and reports. It all depends on the role that you are handling within the organization. A CEO’s summary and a report will be different from that of one who is in the marketing and sales team. For instance, as a CEO, you might want to have summaries that consist of things like the following.

• How is the marketing and sales team progressing?
• What meetings do you need to be part of that day and what are your expectations regarding it?
• What are the common employee problems that you need to solve?
• Measures that will help you deal with customer touch points.

4. Beat the Work Overload

Summaries and reports can help you beat the work overload easily. You would not have to worry about missing deadlines, and you would be able to understand the business pain points easily. You would also be able to be focused and keep you organized.

When writing summaries, keep pointers to keep a to-do list that you can use easily. When writing your reports at the end of the day, you can also have some pointers so that you can compare them with reports of the next day.

5. Allocate the Priorities

Sometimes, you will not be able to do all that you write in the summaries. So, it is a good idea to prioritize and write according to the things that are more urgent. You can also write ‘A’ for the task that is more important and ‘F’ for the one that is less important.

You can carry out all the necessary tasks, and you would not get stressed by the large number of jobs that you have to deal with.

Why Is Time Management So Important In Business?

Time management helps businesses power ahead of the competition. You will be able to do more, and get the best results by creating the right summaries and reports.

If you have a lot of many tasks to do the next day, which you can understand from your reports, change the task when you begin to get bored. Take it into account when you are creating the summary the next day.

To manage time effectively, set an achievable goal. Do not set an unreasonable goal that would lower your confidence. Irrespective of the type of work, plan each day’s summary according to your priorities. Creating a schedule will also minimize last-minute deadlines.

The next step would be to prioritize your tasks with summaries. Unimportant tasks such as chatting on social networking sites consume a lot of your day. Research shows that setting the color scheme to black and white would make the sites look boring and make you uninterested in using them.

Evaluating is also an important aspect of time management. Use summaries to maintain an account of how you spend time. Knowing the time estimates for each work will help you plan in a better way.

Before you evaluate the day’s reports, take a short break at regular intervals to the task, as it will help regain concentration and ensure you do not make any mistakes.

For any business, the ability to manage time with unmatched efficiency can help produce quality work in good time. And summaries and reports can just make the process a lot more efficient.

Teamgate Introduces ‘Morning Muffin’

In October (2016) Teamgate will introduce its newest Summary-building feature – ‘Morning Muffin’. With Morning Muffin you can choose to receive a morning email with the most important updates from the last day:

• Lead update
• Pipeline update
• Today’s agenda, including your meetings, calls and tasks.

Users will be able to turn on ‘Morning Muffin’ in their Teamgate Account settings bar. All daily updates or just a few of them can be selected. The start of the day supposed to be productive!

If you do not have Teamgate account yet, you can sign up for free here.