Cutting costs requires eliminating noncore expenses. First, consider doing an inventory of your assets. You should take the time to look over your property, furniture, equipment and all other assets, and then document what you have.
It’s likely that a lot of your recorded assets no longer exist, which means you have probably been paying too much in insurance and property taxes.
By doing this inventory, you will eliminate these non-core expenses and receive considerable savings. Additionally, if you haven’t compared insurance rates in recent years, you should probably consider looking around and re-evaluating your coverage. Your company is likely different now than it was several years ago, and you may be paying to much.
Next, look at your office expenses, determine what your noncore expenses are, and then cut those costs. Do you need to have separate fax and copy machines, or would it make sense to consolidate the two? Are people wasting paper by printing out documents when the work can be done electronically? Do your employees really need blackberries with full Internet access?
You must monitor all of your office expenses and figure out which are important and which are excess.
Cutting costs requires some frugality, as long as you’re doing it reasonably and in your company’s best interests. You must determine what your employees need compared to what they are accustomed to, and from there eliminate unnecessary office expenses.
Afterwards, research your different energy costs and potential alternatives. While you’ve likely heard of companies going green, you must research what that means and how that applies to cutting costs.
After work, should everyone turn off their computers or leave them idle? Are there realistic savings in replacing your light bulbs with environmentally friendly ones? Is it worth the effort? Cutting costs requires being proactive and researching whether or not you can find savings– after all, every dollar counts.
Finally, you can cut your non-core expenses by ensuring that your employees spend their time wisely. Multitasking is often a huge waste of time, and you should discourage this practice. Your salesmen may be seeking out the easiest customers, or the low hanging fruit, when the reality is this may not be worth the effort, and they should be focusing on bigger clients and accounts.
What non-core expenses have you found easy to cut?
