Whether you’re a clinical, therapeutic, support service or consumables business, operating in the NDIS market comes with its own challenges including restricted margins, deadlines, and competing high demand. Let’s look at ways to maximise the time to money ratio and help keep sustainable businesses in the NDIS.

Before we can prepare for growth, the best thing we can do is create ways to automate process driven tasks using systems. A great start is to look for things that are time consuming and search for software that can assist in minimising these tasks. These may include systems such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Content Management System (CMS) that holds confidential client information safe, even connecting to your rostering system and an accounting system.

Eliminating feeds right back to automating - automating tasks removes items that need to be done manually; ultimately saving time. When time is money, creating KPIs to keep your team on track so they are focused on what needs to be done, will be a great way to eliminate time chewing activities that don't contribute value.

This seems like a no brainer - but you’d be surprised how vital this is at every level of the business, and how it should be wound into KPIs for all staff. Starting with stakeholders, networks, complimenting businesses that don’t compete with your services, your accountant/bookkeeper, legal, HR support, business coaches, subject matter experts, and especially your staff.

Really getting to know your staff, their likes, interests, passions, and drivers (i.e., money, security, goodwill, good customer relationships) will be the most important way to ensure you have the right people doing the right jobs. Get to know how your staff receive praise for good work performance too - this will ensure you are feeding them the well-deserved praise in a way that they understand and receive.

We often delegate tasks based on what needs to be done by whoever is available to do the job at the time. Taking a minute to get to know your staff, as mentioned above, will ensure you have the right person doing a job they are naturally good at - which in turn, gives better, more sustainable results and prevents staff burnout.

Now that you’ve got these bases covered, hold on to your hats! Accelerating your business is a time-consuming exercise. It means that you’ll need to advertise your services and staff, get those KPIs working and ensure that there is good feedback, follow up and quick turnaround for quality services. Strong organisations start from the inside, out.