6 Time Management Tips for Apparel Business Retailers

Time equals money. If you lose precious time, you lose money. And who would better understand this than apparel business retailers? Time management actually means how you utilize the number of hours available to you to the maximum, no matter how much occupied you are.

If you waste time with your inefficient processes, your competitors would swoop in and take you customers in no time. To prevent that, we have listed down seven most important time management tips for you which includes important points like training your stuff and using an apparel ERP software. Let’s begin!

6 Time Management Tips for Apparel Business

From the use of tech aids to changing the way you start your workday, you need to take small steps towards effective time management.

1. Set Clear Goals

Be extremely specific of what you want your goals to be. Build a habit to write them down first thing in the morning and make a check list of what your employees will be doing for the day. And the most important thing is to give clear directions to your employees.

For example, saying ‘clean the store room’ will not have much effect as saying ‘arrange the items in the store room according to the date of their arrival’. Giving clear and concise instructions to your employees is essential. 

2. Remove Distractions

Be it answering unnecessary calls or emails, it consumes a major part of the day if not planned properly. Your precious time can also be wasted if you are caught up in the web of social media.

You will not even know where all your time went by. Small talks with employees will also result in wasting precious time which could have been used for different tasks.

3. Use a Time Management System

Most of the apparel ERP software applications come with a built-in module for managing time and human resources. Apparel ERP software works wonders for busy retail owners who can assign and monitor the amount of time they devote to any particular task.

Setting a deadline to any complex task is important as it helps you stay focused and get your mind on the task. You can ask for a demo of different apparel ERP software tools, and select the best one which would be suitable for your store.

4. Automate Selected Operations

You can automate specific operations for your business, such as sending promotional emails, sharing invoices with your vendors, tracking your sales and managing inventory. Not all business operations can be automated, but there are a lot of tools and applications like apparel ERP software programs that can help you automate monotonous tasks that drain your time during the day.

Automation has reached a level where Amazon not only uses robots in warehouses and drones for delivery, it has also started using autonomous trucks to reduce its delivery costs. This is the power of automation.

5. Schedule Free Time for Yourself

Your cognitive abilities decrease when you are constantly busy. You become less productive and are more prone to make errors. Schedule small 15 minute break mid-morning and in the evening as well. We know that as retailers you hard get free time.

But big names like Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, also keeps his Mondays and Thursdays unstructured. Unstructured time means that he didn’t have a specific tasks for the day so that he could focus on building the vision of the company. For starters, you can include a short 15 minute break in your schedule, can’t you?

6. Prioritize Your Tasks

In retail, everything gets busier as the day goes by. So, it is better to plan and do your important tasks at the earliest. It is also said that our willpower is the strongest when we are starting the day at work. Therefore, you are likely to accomplish your most significant tasks early in the day.

Consider completing tedious activities through automation, as discussed above. Scratch out unproductive tasks from your schedule and devote your time on the tasks that need active brain participation.

7. Train Your Staff

Train your staff to manage their time efficiently. Investing time in their training now, and prevent discrepancies in the long run. When your employees complain that they are not able to complete their tasks in time, that’s when you should realise that there is a lack of training on time management.

Quality training helps improve performance, efficiency and consistency. You can teach them how to plan and estimate their time better. You can also schedule periodic sessions with experts to help them become more efficient.

There are so many different ways in which you can take out more time for important tasks in your apparel retail business. When you start your day earlier than the rest of the world, you are automatically ahead of time.

Similarly, writing things down helps you remember what your priorities are. Implement these tried and tested methods to manage your time to the fullest.