If you are a sole practitioner or a member of a small practice, you have total or high control over how you work. Being efficient is a great way to increase your bottom line, just as powerful as revenue growth. In a nutshell, investments that make you or your staff more efficient have huge paybacks because they save time and money that you can reinvest in growth and / or improving your quality of service, which also spurs growth.
 I am obsessive about finding ways to be more efficient. Every month or so, I take an hour just to think of new ways to achieve that. I’ve come to realize that there are three major themes to being more efficient (besides simply getting more technical training and experience that allows me to work more productively): minimizing paper, minimizing fixed assets, and minimizing computer maintenance. As I see it, even with growth, I am still operating at maybe 60% of capacity (50 hour week basis), so I do not need to hire staff or outsource research / analysis, and I have time to write, teach, and think!
 Minimizing paper flow has always been a big goal. I get most of my economic, industry, and company data online (the latter from websites and PDFs of financials). Most of my reports are written from templates. I sent out most drafts and reports electronically. I just bought an Amazon Kindle DX to get national newspapers and (I hope) new valuation books electronically. I bank online (but still have to go to the branch for the happy ritual of making deposits. I use online phone directories and postage. My website is my brochure. I send my newsletters electronically. I save reports, invoices, spreadsheets, and supporting documents in a combined file, one per assignment. I have not had success with speech to text dictation into the computer…once that improves, I will give it another shot. (The technology, not my speech, thank you very much!)
 Minimizing fixed assets is something rather new for me. This includes equipment, cables, and real estate! I moved my office to my home. I use a Blackberry with built-in GPS (AT&T Navigator), Efax instead of a separate machine, and converted my landline office number to a cell so I am always available. I use the Carbonite automated remote hard disk backup service (instead of a separate hard drive) and a daily backup to a CDROM and thumb drive. I use a laptop, not a desktop, so with the cell I am totally portable. My Blackberry, printer and laptop are connected wirelessly. I use a Bluetooth wireless earpiece for my cell.
 Minimizing computer maintenance includes automating every possible task like the backups, virus updates, etc. That used to take a lot of time, but is getting easier as these programs are highly automated.
 I still have some paper files – books, conference presentations, articles, CPE and tax records – that I could scan, but I am waiting for my trusty HP printer to die so I can replace it with a multifunction device that does that well.Â
 My goal (fantasy) that I will probably never attain is to have no paper, no wires, and just one highly automated, backed up super-gadget that does everything except think!