Politics and Business

4 Ways to be More Proactive in Cutting Business Costs

By  | 

Are you looking for the chance to take your business to the next level? Growth isn’t always easy to come by, especially in this climate where consumer confidence is at its lowest in years. Growth isn’t just about gaining more customers and selling more products. It’s also about ditching dead weight and cutting the excessive, wasteful or unnecessary expenses associated with running your business. 

Of course you can’t grow your business without investing in it, and it’s an economic fallacy to cut your way to growth. However, there are lots of ways in which you could make your business a little leaner and more cost effective, enabling you to make the capital investments that are necessary to grow your business sustainably. The trouble is that all-too-often we don’t identify excess expenditure until we’ve… already spent it. By which time, of course, it’s usually too late.

Here are a few ways in which you can get a little more productive when it comes to cutting business costs…

Invest in a Business Intelligence Platform

The first thing you need to be able to do is identify business costs as quickly as possible. And depending on the structure of your business, this may be easier said than done. Many legacy business structures rely on departments operating within their own quasi-autonomous silos. 

Business Intelligence affords you greater visibility of your business data in a centralized repository, including departmental spending.  

Cut invisible expenses as a priority

Some expenses are visible not just to your employees but to your clients. Indeed, they may even add to your brand’s appeal, showing that you’re prepared to invest in being the best. There are some expenses, on the other hand, that are invisible and these should be your number one priority. They may not necessarily make your operation more efficient or contribute to your value added. They’re just there because someone, somewhere is guilty of an oversight. For instance, unused SaaS subscriptions are a common invisible expense, as are your own personal travel expenses. 

Cutting your own salary may be less than desirable, however it may be a viable short term strategy if you have growth on your mind. 

Invest in keeping your employees safe (wherever they are)

Safe employees are happy employees. And making sure they’re looked after can save you myriad costs associated with high employee turnover. These range from the costs of finding, training and onboarding replacement employees to the inevitable productivity loss experienced while new team members get up to speed. 

Of course, this doesn’t just mean taking care of your employees while they’re on-site. It also means investing in advanced GPS solutions if you have team members on the road. These often include driver and dash cams, helping you to improve driver accountability and reduce the cost of a truck accident when a third party is to blame. A safe and happy workforce is, of course, its own reward. 

Always be haggling

Finally, your vendors will usually be willing to sacrifice a little of their margin for the sake of retaining a valuable customer like yourself for longer. So you should always be haggling with your vendors to arrange a better rate and potentially improve your cash flow. Don’t worry, they won’t take it personally. 

 

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply