Make certain that you and your employees work efficiently. If you do, your business is more likely to be profitable.

Consider three areas of productivity: Time management, operational functions and unnecessary tasks.

Time is the only resource you cannot replenish. Once it’s spent, it’s gone. And it’s costly.

Manage your time more efficiently with uniformity. If everyone in the organization uses a different software product, work grinds to a halt while everyone tries to resolve compatibility and file sharing problems.

Go one step further. Not only make one type of software required for everyone, but when appropriate, employ software suites rather than cobbling together individual programs that risk compatibility problems of their own. Suites like Microsoft Office are made to work seamlessly. And seamless means faster, which means less of that irretrievable spent time.

Particularly in small businesses, multifunction devices that combine printing, faxing, photocopying and other functions can save not only time (since employees learn one machine instead of several), but cash too. For the price of one stand-alone device, a multifunction device combines the abilities of three, four or more devices. Unless your needs outstrip the capabilities of a multifunction machine, it’s a good productivity-improving option.

Granted, restraint requires discipline, but in the long run it may increase productivity more than anything else. Do 10 people really need to attend a $1,000 meeting (in equivalent salary costs) to solve a $100 problem? Are your employees surfing the Internet when they should be closing sales? A little discipline eliminates a lot of unnecessity.