Streamlining Efficiency to Reduce Unnecessary Expenditure

The current economic crisis calls for extreme measures in cost reduction. Whilst budget-cutting and downsizing are the apparent approaches to reforming your company’s expenditure; a lot can be done to reduce costs by addressing inefficiencies and redundancies in your business model.

Often these processes may seem daunting. In truth, a large scale implementation of GS1 tags in conjunction with an updated tracking system, or a full restructuring of your product catalogue, can bear significant results when it comes to optimized efficiency and the benefits they will have on your bottom line. The biggest risk one runs to cause panic and lose consumer confidence.

Thus opting for measures to streamline your operations is arguably the lower-risk approach. For small businesses, this can be an immensely daunting and confusing prospect to navigate. We have, therefore put together our list of efficiency tips to consider when looking at ways to reign in expenses.

What Can You Outsource?

Merely because a particular division or department is no longer economically viable to maintain in-house does not mean that your company needs to go without it. Let us use your marketing department as an example. Full-time staff may be somewhat redundant when budgetary cuts mean that said staff will not be working anywhere near capacity.

Whilst you may need to go ahead with the unpleasant business of retrenchment, there is a lifebuoy hidden within this unfortunate circumstance. At a fraction of the cost of a full complement of staff, you could outsource your company’s marketing to specialized service providers.

This will free up funding to improve on current marketing drives and make a measurable impact on your outgoing expenses. This principle applies to a great variety of internal functions, including finance and production.

What Do You Need?

Or rather, what is the bare minimum functionality you require to remain a solvent business? It is an unfortunate affair, having to reduce operations. It may feel like this process negates the years of effort that likely went into achieving the diversity of functions your company currently boasts. The current economic crisis is primed to be the worst in market history, with untold and unpredictable ramifications for all sectors of commerce.

This is where extreme optimization of your operations comes into play. It would help if you reverted to your core business model. What is your primary service or product? Focussing solely on this and putting everything else on indefinite hold has worked for major corporations like McDonald’s, and stands to improve the odds of survival of your business.

Who’s Buying?

It may not be immediately apparent, but this is a crucial area for optimizing efficiency. Who are you selling to, and to what degree of particular measure? The more resources you need to dedicate to the chain of supply, the more specialized your market is.

In a healthy economy, this can be an essential part of your business model. In times of uncertainty, it is a matter of having all of your eggs in one basket. Reducing costs by generalizing your target market is not a straightforward endeavour; after all, your target market may be inherently specialised.

Your only possible approach to this problem is to look to e-commerce and product/service delivery partnerships. Yours is not by any measure the only business facing economic uncertainty, and finding efficient market delivery partnerships will help increase the scope of your target market.