IN THE early days of time management, the system revolved around keeping checklists and ticking boxes.

These organisational tools still have a role to play, but lower down the chain. Today, managing time is a much broader issue linked to the key elements that drive a business forward, such as strategy, values and goals.

In Stephen Covey's top-selling personal change book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the author says the best thinking in the area of time management is to organise and execute around priorities.

This may not sound like hot, recession-beating advice but a business that does not take control of its situation (as best it can) will be buffeted by every variable in the economic landscape.

Taking control may sound like a hollow aspiration to businesses ground down by the strain of just surviving but managers who have grasped the controllable elements of their business and changed them into something more effective are benefiting economically and in spirit from taking the initiative.

This was the experience of the Dún Laoghaire-based international events management company Ovation, which has recently undertaken a major overhaul of its business. During the boom years the company grew significantly as work poured in. Since the downturn the company has lost around 20 per cent of its business, particularly from clients in the financial services sector.

“Initially everyone was shell-shocked and you could feel morale slipping and the whole atmosphere becoming more downbeat. It was very hard not to feel paralysed by the situation,” says Ovation’s managing director Pat Delaney.

Delaney says the paralysis lasted for several months but having gone through a period of “mourning” for times past, he decided it was time to dust down and regroup.

“When I analysed the situation I realised we had no vision and no plan to cope with the situation we found ourselves in and were not providing leadership for staff. No wonder morale was low.

“We set about a complete evaluation of our business from top to bottom. We decided to use our time productively by focusing on what we could control – for example costs, improving the strength of relationships with our clients, offering more services to existing customers and putting a big effort into targeting sectors that were still spending money, such as the pharmaceuticals industry.”

The reorganisation saw redundancies and pay cuts for those remaining but Delaney says what has emerged from the restructuring is a stronger, fitter and more efficient organisation. “When you’re constantly very busy you don’t have time to look at what you’re doing in detail,” he says.

“In our case we tended to silo expertise rather than sharing it across the company. By sharing we have been able to reduce the size of our operational teams. We also dropped services that were not making money and stopped working with clients who were not paying. We’re definitely working harder but also smarter and more productively within the time we have.”

Fabio Grassi is a management specialist at the Irish Management Institute with a particular interest in time management. “The principles of time management remain but there has to be a change in emphasis,” he says. “Now companies must maximise the value they are getting for the time spent on doing something. They must look at what is of fundamental importance to the strategic direction of their business and spend their time working on things aligned to this. It is not the time to do for the sake of doing. Identify the things that really matter and focus on those. This at least will provide a direction in these uncertain times.”

Professional services software company eXpd8 made a major change to its business model in order to cope with a changed marketplace. One of its key products is a time-management and billing system for small and medium-sized professional practices (such as legal firms) which traditionally sold for €1,800 per user.

“We recognised that, as the recession began to bite, the upfront outlay was too great for many SMEs,” says CEO Declan Branagan. “So we introduced a new pricing model, renting the same software at a cost of just €1 per user per day, invoiced monthly.”

The result was a decline in cashflow but an increase in take-up. New business so far this year is up 25 per cent on 2008 while the company has also seen growth in its sales of related IT products and services.

Anne Marie Keown is general manager of corporate training company Optimum. She says businesses are now split into those with more time on their hands because business is slow and those with less because of redundancies.

“For both, managing time is more important than ever,” she says. “Where people have more time it is an opportunity to take stock and address areas within the business that have been allowed slip. For example, following up leads or checking in with customers that haven’t been in contact for a while. It can also be an opportunity to redo the corporate presentation and to get out there and pitch to potential new customers.”

For companies under time pressure because of fewer staff, Keown suggests taking stock of remaining employees’ skills and talents to see if they are being used to the full. “People get pigeon-holed and their skill base may be a lot wider than their job has demanded up to now,” she says.

“Employees need to be encouraged to give as much as they can in the current environment.”

Case study: Sweey deal for chocolate firm

KERRY-BASED SKELLIGS Chocolates has the distinction of being the most westerly chocolate maker in Europe. Skelligs produces handmade truffles and, in March 2006, it joined forces with the fledgling Cocoa Bean Chocolate Company, which makes unusually flavoured chocolate bars. The merger provided good synergy as both companies were selling to speciality retailers and both were at the early stage of breaking into the UK market.

Bringing the two companies together generated costs savings in key areas such as ingredients and distribution. It also allowed the companys owner, Colm Healy, to pursue a sales and business development role full time while his partner, Lisa Flanagan, and Cocoa Bean co-founder, Emily Sandford, ran the business day-to-day. Skelligs currently employs 11 people and had a turnover of €850,000 in 2008.

Healy had hoped it would be a little higher but as 2008 drew to a close it became clear that the economic downturn had begun to affect the nations sweet tooth. Retail sales are down, shops are reluctant to hold stock and they are ordering less often and in smaller quantities, says Colm Healy. The good news is that sales at our factory shop are holding up very well and people seem to have no issue with the price.

Healy is both an entrepreneur and an optimist who has seen opportunity in the downturn. We are under less time pressure so Ive taken the opportunity to study for a diploma in business management at University College Cork and I dont feel guilty about taking the time out to do it, he says.

We are taking a very positive view of the current situation. We see it as giving us time to breathe, to do more product RD and to take an objective look at our business and weed out the elements that are not working.

“We had amassed a lot of research information of strategic importance to the business but had never had time to look at it properly up to now. Weve been running at full tilt for some time and inevitably you long finger things on the to do list. This is the opportunity to put our house in order.

Healy says that he, like many others, are suffering recession fatigue. Im tired of listening to endless tales of the recession. The sky hasnt fallen in and while its not easy people are getting by, he says. Companies can choose to see the negative or the positive in the current situation, its their choice. In our own case we decided on a positive course of action and are implementing this in the belief that it will set us up better for the future. I believe that if a business is fundamentally sound it may shake a little when times are rough but it will ultimately survive.

Bringing together two niche chocolate companies allowed both firms to save money and allowed Skelligs Chocolates’ owner Colm Meaney to devote time and energy to important projects that had been put on the long finger