A few options to consider to help your photography business run more smoothly

Ask any school photographer and they’ll tell you that when you get to a certain level in your business growth, it can get more challenging to keep on top of orders. Organising, managing, editing and printing photographs takes a lot of time – it’s probably the most time consuming part of running your own photography business.

When you get to a business crossroads and need to take action in order to manage your working processes – there are actionable solutions you can try. For example, enlisting the help of an assistant or you could use specialist software to streamline your workflow. Make sure to keep business cards on you at alll times just incase you happen to run into the correct person.

Let’s have a look at a few options you can use to make your business run more smoothly:

Management Workflow Software

Forget about disorganised spreadsheets flying about and hundreds of photos in millions of different folders – MaxLab is perfect for high-volume photo management. It can help to manage your workflow and reduce manual work through a variety of automated processes.

Features such as Face Detect help to minimise production errors and improve your efficiency by automatically cropping shots and helping you build your portfolio.

You can also keep account of all of your files and photos really easily with a Powerful Search function that will help you to scour your database in an instant and find the specific files you’re looking for. Images will be profiled with meta-data and tagged, so you can find them quickly.

Minimise your costs by taking your printing process in-house too. MaxLab enables you to essentially become your very own lab – giving your more control over production costs and timings. The software is compatible with the latest generation of DryLab printers from Fujifilm too. This is the perfect solution if you want to run your business with a bar-code proof card system – you can manage your workflow and oversee your printing process.

Hiring Help

Getting an assistant to come on shoots and help with your photo purchasing and organisation can be a savvy solution, but one of the main reasons people branch out on their own with school photography is so they can keep costs low and work solo, If you think you might have friends and family who would want to help you out, that can be a great option.

Nonetheless, having an extra pair of hands can prove invaluable and they can offer a fresh set of eyes on projects and your photo management process.

Hiring a member of staff can come with its own set of problems though and it can be difficult to manage someone else, as well as your own business. The cost of employment will drive down your profits too. It’s also super useful to be able to keep a handle on all of your workflow processes, instead of outsourcing it to someone else – it’ll help you to make better, more informed decisions.

Become more Efficient

Whatever method you choose to help make your business more efficient, making sure it’s cost-effective and leaves you with creative control is important. Being able to oversee your business and manage your processes allows you to make better decisions – relying on someone else to do this can lead to oversights, so workflow software can be a really intelligent way to organise your business.

Other photography articles that may be of interest to you should you be running your own photography business and taking it to the next level.

How to Network and Promote your first Photography Business,
How to win a school photography contract, 
5 Advantages of becoming your own Lab.