Cost Reduction Strategies, Ideas and Hacks for Your Enterprise

It’s of no surprise that an established business firm often struggle to pull the reigns of its business expenditures. For the small business owners, this turns out to be even more important because during the economic slack saving or earning a single more penny affects the sustainability of a business enterprise. You may be wondering how could we do it, right?

The good news is you don’t have to apply a large scale enterprise overhaul. That being said, we are living in a world that is revolutionizing everything with technological changes. Consider these changes as dots and make sure to connect those dots – that’s it. In this article, we will guide you through how you can reduce costs and expenditures of your enterprise. So, stay tuned to discover them!

Adopt virtual technologies as many as you can

With the ever-increasing rate of internet usage, virtual technologies are getting popularity more than ever. Here are a few virtual technologies you can consider for your enterprise’s cost-cutting ideas:

Cloud Services for document management

Really gone are the days when businesses included a plethora of paperwork which needed a huge amount of money to spend on. Here is a stat:

According to a research conducted by the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance, the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year for copy purpose.

You can read more about the negative facets of using papers which are responsible for high expenditures. Luckily, you can use some popular cloud document managers like Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, Dropbox and many more to store, retrieve and even in some cases process your document.

What’s more! You can avail free yet powerful word processor with some cloud document managers, for example, Google Drive. Since data are stored on the server, you can rest assured on the retrieval and security of your documents.

Cut domain and hosting expenses

As businesses of today’s world have surpassed the physical world and made their way to the virtual world, a (small, medium and large) business enterprise has to maintain a website.

 

Sadly, most of the small business owners often spend a ton of bucks on such domains and hosting plans as are really expensive when it comes to utilities. They buy the domain and hosting services including a bunch of features they do not require at all. Hence, never be too extravagant and know your needs first whenever you plan to buy them!

Learn More: How Much Does It Really Cost To Build A WordPress Website?

Modernize your marketing methods

The stereotyped media technologies include Television Ads, Newspapers, Bill Boards and things like these. Unquestionably, they are still very good options for your products’ marketing but the problem is they are pretty costly when it comes to the number of conversions to customers. As the current trend of marketing is moving from these traditional techs towards online marketing. Hence, it would be wise to invest in Affiliate Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Networking and YouTube marketing which are the part of virtual technology.

Learn more: 7 Affiliate Marketing Hacks You Must Know Before You Start!

Automate with the lucrative ERP technologies

An ERP solution can take you beyond cutting plenty of expenditures. With a state-of-the-art ERP solution, you will be armed with almost all kinds of stuff required to manage your enterprise’s Human Resources, Customer or Client Resources and even Accounting.

However, this includes but is not limited to HRM, CRM, and Accounting. To be honest you can do much more with an ERP system. This way, you can eliminate the necessity of hiring professionals which can compress your enterprise’s expenditures.

Need an ERP?: Get an ERP solution for free!

Avoid traveling by using communication technologies

Who needs to travel these days when there are virtual technologies like emails, internet calls, VOIP services, text messaging, voice messaging and so on! Your team can be interconnected with some communication technologies like Slack, Trello, Skype, Team Viewer etc. whenever you are working on a project that requires making your team intertwined to be on the same page.

These technologies will pave the way to shrink your enterprise’s traveling expenditures. Therefore, never skimp on streamlining such technologies for your enterprise.

Switch from bank payment to online payment methods

Bank account, on an average, tends to be more expensive than online payment method, for example, Stripe, PayPal etc. Besides, the latter is way faster and requires just a matter of few clicks to pay or receive. This will not only let you save pennies but also let you save your valuable time and effort.

Set up automatic payments if possible

A great hack could be you can set up automatic payments with the help of a Credit card to pay your dues. The only thing that you need to do is pick a date and time when a certain amount of funds will be pulled out of a checking account.

Check and double- check your supply expenses

Did you know that in the United States, some office supplier charges you more than the online discount suppliers like Amazon, BJ’s, or Wal-Mart? To reduce expenses you can also purchase a bulk amount of supplies to avail massive discounts from them.

Maximize your employees’ skills

You can motivate your employees to improve their skill from virtual classrooms like Udemy, EdX, Khan Academy and many more. You can also prod them by evaluating their newly earned skill and giving incentives accordingly. This will result in their increased productivity with respect to the amount of compensation you are paying for.

Tune up your enterprise’s equipment

Here are the business cost saving ideas you can apply to your enterprise equipment.

Upgrade enterprise equipment

Depending on the model of electric equipment, power consumption may vary quite a lot. For instance, Bluetooth technologies require more power than the NFC technologies which require little or of no power. Another example is that green technologies like Fluorescent bulbs can cut electric bills to as much as 50 percent by replacing the incandescent bulbs.

Sell old equipment but buy refurbished equipment if it is too expensive

After upgrading to the latest version of your office’s equipment, you can sell the old ones to eBay, Amazon or on the local market to reduce the capital expenditure. On sale, the scrap value of office equipment can play a vital role to neutralize the upgrade cost.

However, if you plan to install an expensive appliance, then you can buy the refurbished ones. To cite an instance, you can purchase a refurbished office delivery van on your enterprise’s need.

Share apparatus instead of employing them on a large number

Employing an item more than the actual need may be an unwise decision for you. For example, you can connect your office printer to everyone’s desktop or laptop so that they can print by sharing whenever they need it.

Miscellaneous

Avoid late payment charges

It’s possible to avoid a good amount of fines by actively paying the bills in due time. You should always try to communicate with the creditor if an issue arises regarding a late fee, such as an unjustified charge. Remember, it’s still possible to mail in a payment, but you must be careful about postage, travel times, and possible delays. Ideally, mail the bill about a week before it’s due.

Reading material: Manage Your Expenses Using WordPress Accounting Plugin

Think before hiring full-timers

For the part-time work, you can hire college/university interns or freelancers instead of hiring full-timers. You can get a pretty good performance from them in exchange for a little buck as they are trying to build a career. But remember, you should hire the most productive employees for your enterprise.

Reading material: How to hire the best candidate using WP ERP Recruitment

Lighten up with paints

According to the Argentine architect Mercedes Martty,

White reflects 80 percent of light while black only reflects five percent.

Usually, dark and shadowy walls need more amount of light than the white walls. Therefore, it would be great if you paint your office walls with white color.

Barter if possible

You can exchange your enterprise’s old equipment, appliances, apparatuses, gadgets, and gears on classified sites like Craigslist.org. You will find a number of people out there to do the barter trading. Check out some bartering websites from here.

Smart thermostats to manage energy costs

Smart thermostats are such a thing as you probably wouldn’t think of cool but today’s Wi-Fi version might blow your mind. You can get a greater grip on electric bills with IoT connected smart thermostats allowing you to control it from remotely. For example, during work hours, you can keep temperatures at comfortable levels for your employees. Moreover, you can adjust them to use less energy when employees are not in the office. In this way, you can save energy and money.

Get the most out of daylight

The duration of daytime significantly fluctuates between Winter and Summer. Ensuring proper utilization of daylight over electric light, you will be able to cut electric bills.

Evaluate your employees

Evaluate your employees on their contribution to your enterprise. You can give incentives to the most productive employees so that they become even more productive. Conversely, fire the unproductive employees to keep the expenses under your control. Before, sacking an employee, you can give him/her a grace period in order to be more productive.

Final words

Cost reduction strategies require your ingenuity together with the proper implementation of intuitive and sophisticated technologies. As a matter of fact, minimizing enterprise expenditures is nothing but a combination of science, art, and business knowledge.

Last but not the least, following the basic accounting principles, maintaining detailed, accurate and unbiased records of your enterprise’s transactions, it becomes easier to keep track of your enterprise’s expenses. The more you get acquainted with your enterprise’s fiscal situation, the greater you can have a grasp whenever it comes to reduce business expenses.

Finally, wish you best of luck for the success of your enterprise. If you think that we have missed any cool tip, feel free to pop your ideas in the comment section so that everyone becomes benefitted. We will remain really grateful for your valuable ideas.