One or the other; Efficiency vs Effectiveness

December 8th, 2016

Many believe you must sacrifice effectiveness for better efficiency or vice versa

 

Today’s post is by Steven Belvin, Account Manager at SafeSourcing

Many believe you must sacrifice effectiveness for better efficiency or vice versa. However, in the proper hands this could not be more wrong. As hard as it may seem there are ways to improve both at a company. BusinessDictionary.com defines Effectiveness as “The degree to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are solved. In contrast to efficiency, effectiveness is determined without reference to costs and, whereas efficiency means “doing the thing right,” effectiveness means “doing the right thing.” BusinessDictionary.com also defines efficiency as “The comparison of what is actually produced or performed with what can be achieved with the same consumption of resources (money, time, labor, etc.). It is an important factor in determination of productivity.” As you see from above effectiveness basically means doing the jobs that are assigned to you and handling any problems that may come up while working on those tasks. Whereas, efficiency basically means how fast you can correctly do your job or what resources can you utilize to help save time, money, material, or labor while completing the task. With this being said it is easy to assume that you must sacrifice one for the other.

However, believe it or not, some of the best ways to improve both is to slow down. Let me explain, the faster you move the more likely you are to mess up what you are working on and if you slow down too much you will not complete the task in the timeframe needed. This is why many companies like to utilize a Strategic Sourcing company like SafeSourcing as a resource. As I come to the end of my first month at SafeSourcing I realize I have been taught ways to improve both my effectiveness and efficiency. I have noticed the time it takes me to complete tasks is slowly starting to go down. It is easy to see why the SafeSourcing team can complete so many tasks in one day to ensure a quick turnaround of events with the highest ROI to the customer.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

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“What Is Efficiency?” BusinessDictionary.com. Business Dictionary, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

“What Is Effectiveness?” BusinessDictionary.com. Business Dictionary, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

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