Life is tough as an owner of a business, certainly tougher than having 8 hours a day office job wherein you are virtually a free bird as soon as the laptop lid comes down. I was more drawn in by the fact that I would be in control, and would have the freedom to things the way I want, and that led me into resigning from my job to grow my business as an IT service provider. It has been more than 5 years now, and I don’t remember ever having the sense of freedom that I got on a Friday evening when I was in regular job. Of course, I am making 5 times the money that I would have dreamed of making with a job, but it comes at a cost of not getting to completely unwind ever. There’s always a critical email lurking in the dark corners of the cyber sphere, ready to spring into view just when you heave a sigh of relief. For someone who loves change and challenges, however, a business is the best of all worlds. Just that one is always running against an invisible wind of revenue maximization and cost reduction. I share my tricks to manage the latter part of the business puzzle here. Expect as much as 10% improvement in your cost reduction results if you can implement half of these tips in their entirety.
Explore technically sound and financially fruitful ways of communication
Of course, emails are cheap, but you would need other means of communication that cost more. Landline telephones connecting team leads and department heads who need to exchange words every now and then could result in your office address being peppered with many lengthy phone bills every month. Though you would much rather invest your time in business development than looking for ways to control the consumption of talk time, you might want to save your travel through the learning curve and adopt this tip right away. Having internet telephony services such as VoIP can go a long way in reducing your telephone bills to a fraction of what they have always been. Virtual meeting place tools are also great ways to enjoy cost effective and efficient calls and meetings with colleagues and clients.
Keep the payroll light and help out college students!
It’s the first half that you need to focus on, the second part is just the outcome of what you’d have to do in order to achieve the first. When business begins to hit the peak and overload marks, you might want to send out invites in colleges and business schools to provide limited period internship to students. This will help you get the services of some smart individuals. Also, this will help the students out as well, as they will earn college credits because of their engagement with a business.
Remove the stains of ink from your office supplies expense sheets
Invariably, you will find the office supplies expenses knock down a few percentages from your operational margins. Also, you will not have to use any complex mathematical algorithms or analyses to work out that the biggest contributor to the office supplies expenses is in the form of printer paper piles and ink cartridges. If you have many printers in your office, chances are that only a few employees are being served per printer. This directly results into quick exhaustion of paper rims and ink cartridges. Matters become worse if your employees tend to waste prints, and take out colored prints unnecessarily. Here are some tips that you can rely upon to help you take control right now-
- Share printers among many employees; this automatically brings in the habit of selective printing in the employees.
- Buy ink cartridges in bulk from trusted online retailers like cartridgeink.co.uk or cartridgesave.co.uk etc; this helps you save a lot of money because of the discounted rates that you get on bulk purchases.
- Look for remanufactured, recycled and third party ink cartridges; these prove to be suitable for routine printing and cost less.
Check if shipping costs are eating away into your margins
A bafflingly huge amount of money is paid to shipping services in an average retail firm’s office. You will be playing it smart if you negotiate it well right from the very beginning, and get inexpensively priced shipping services. Keep expensive packaging out of the game, unless you are shipping premium or fragile stuff. Most renowned and trusted shipping services offer their corporate packages, so it is advisable that you send your representatives to these shipping services so that they can get the best deal for you. Remember, when you know that you are paying the least possible amount for the desired service level, you are effectively saving with every new shipment.