One of the biggest problems that face small businesses in the current competitive climate is the actual expense of oing business. The entire basis for a competitive marketplace is for the strong to survive, the leanest and the meanest to prosper and for the weak to perish. This may sound very cliche, but it is grounded in truth. If your business is spending too much, it is going to be reflected in your bottom line, and you will simply not be able to compete with against others in the market.
This means that you need to lower your business expenses in order to survive. There is a silver lining through, wherever there is adversity rearing its ugly head, opportunity is not far behind. Lowering your business expenses can be achieved through two fundamental principles, (i) commitment and (ii) creativity.
Create a Culture of Saving
This may sound elementary, but you would be surprised at how often many owners undercut their goals to reduce costs by fostering a corporate culture of waste and privilege. Things like treating your sales staff to business class flights for any trip, regardless of the occasion is simply wasteful. While there is a time to make sure your salesmen/women arrive well rested, there are many times when it is equally appropriate to save a few dollars by trimming the leg room.
Business trips are an excellent example of an activity which would benefit from a frugal corporate culture. Since the nature of the business is that it takes place on the road, with a somewhat flexible set of guidelines, it would benefit your business a great deal to make sure that your road warriors had bought in to your companies plan to reduce costs.
Building a corporate culture can only be done throug education and consistency. Make sure that everyone in the company is aware that one of your primary goals is to be efficient with your resources. Make sure that this is incorporated into your companies mission statement. Appoint an officer to oversee and improve corporate cost efficiencies, and bring their reports to each board meeting.
Get Creative
While some savings can be obvious, other solutions to wasteful corporate expenses can be found from the foot soldiers of the company. If you are looking for ways to reduce paper waste in the office, then perhaps the best way to get a solution is to ask those people who generate the paper waste. Quite often, they are the best sources of solutions, as they can see the more obvious areas which can be reduced. It is surprising how many times employees are ignored in this process, and consultants are brought in to oversee a solution. You can’t get what you don’t ask for, and most employees are more than willing to give their insight.
Technology can often be the answer, such as power consumption solutions which are emerging via the Green IT initiatives. Power management software and systems can reduce needless heating or electrical wastes, and quite often these solutions are quite cost effective to implement.
Educate and Communicate
While creating the culture is important, providing a basic education program and a best practices policy will further this evolution. Education can be as simple as targeting specific areas where you want to lower costs, such as travel expenses, photocopies or even office heating. This can result in specific goals which you can work to attain, while building an overall strategy. The best practices policy is effective at establishing expected behaviors which will define the corporate culture. Perhaps asking people to bring a sweater into the office during the winter, instead of cranking up the heat. Or if a rough draft needs to be printed, reusing paper but using the other side (this can be easily done by establishing a printer in the office as a draft printer, which is filled with reusable paper).
Keep everyone post through the use of visual cues or signs. A sign which outlines how much the company saves that is posted in the company newsletter or on the bulletin board can be valuable to update everyone of progress and reinforce the message. Perhaps even rewarding success by setting monthly cost reduction goals is an excellent way to drive the message home and get people excited. This can be as simple as ordering a pizza for the office on a Friday for lunch.
There are a number of ways to lower business expenses, and most are directly sitting in front of you. But no matter how obvious they may be, unless everyone on the team is committed to attaining these goals there is no hope for success. So, take the time to plan and implement a program to lower business expenses and ensure your success in the future.
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