Business
7 Creative Ways to Save on Operating Costs
7 Creative Ways to Save on Operating Costs. Internet Marketing, Reduce Inventory Levels, Hire Interns, Software License Management
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to increase profits or save money because profits are down, cutting costs has been an essential point of focus over the last year.
Many small businesses have been making efforts to get creative in maximizing profits or simply continuing operation given the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re looking for other ways to save on operating costs, we’ve compiled a list of seven creative ways to save on operating costs.
Table of Contents
1. Internet Marketing
While there are aspects of internet marketing that cost money (it can add up quickly), you can still market your business online at very little to no cost at all. Yes, maintaining a website does cost money, but driving leads to your website can be free.
Discover wherewith to practice search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve your search engine results’ visibility. You will find that it does require website maintenance and content marketing to take a proper and lasting approach to SEO.
Utilize social media to drive leads from potential customers. It does take time to manage a social media account, but the report itself and the content created are free. You can build a following using creative social media posts that catch the eye of your customer base.
Once you have built your consumer base, you can start email marketing with free services like Sendinblue, Benchmark, OmniSend, and others. Be aware that some email marketing services like MailChimp and MailerLite are free until you reach a certain subscriber threshold or quantity of emails sent.
2. Reduce Inventory Levels
Don’t spend money on warehousing a large inventory. The product that sits on the shelves is a product that is costing you money. While it’s nice to have stock readily available for quick fulfilment, there’s a good chance you won’t use all that you have on hand.
Any product that doesn’t get purchased is taking up space for a product that does move and eating cash flow because it’s practically gone to waste. Limit the number of items you keep on your shelves to lower your operating costs to save money now and in the future.
3. Hire Interns
Interns are a great way to find cheap or free labour. Your business can quickly bring in a fresh set of eyes to see how you do business, get the latest information on business operations and marketing techniques, and provide a pool of potential entry-level hires.
It’s essential to have a plan for your internship program to ensure that you’re providing a benefit to them and future interns. Utilize the extra hands to increase productivity and ensure that you can give feedback on their work.
4. Software License Management
Whether you have a large team of 100 to 500 employees or just five people in a small room, it can be challenging to keep track of software licenses. Whether you’re using the Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, or anything else, a software licensing management system can help you monitor your licensing to ensure continued and seamless productivity.
A lapse in software licensing can lead to a break in production, which will cost you and your employees money. You can have your IT team run your software license management system or outsource it to a third party if you don’t have an in-house IT team.
5. Cut Down on Travel
Even when it’s necessary, travel is expensive. With costs like flights, rental cars, and a per diem, it all adds up quickly. However, technology makes it easier to avoid costly business trips.
Video conference calls can be done at very little to no cost now, making it easy to create a virtual meeting with business partners and clients alike. Use the money you save from cutting travel to invest in your business and your employees. It’s cheaper to run highly productive equipment than to pay for monthly or quarterly business trips.
6. Let Employees Work Remotely
With an office comes loads of overhead. Things like utility bills, maintenance costs, equipment, rent, or mortgage can add up and cut into your profits. Employees who work from home can help you save on all these costs.
While working remotely isn’t for everyone, you can help your employees thrive in their homework environment and provide high productivity levels by giving the appropriate tools and training. Furthermore, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has proven that remote work is more practical than many employers initially thought.
7. Conserve Energy
If you need to maintain an office space, make an effort to save energy. From turning off lights in unused rooms to getting a smart thermostat, you can cut costs here and there to save money.
A more energy-efficient business is a frugal business. Even if it means more upfront costs from buying things like solar panels or a smart office system, you can save money in the long run by cutting your energy bill.
Business
Transforming Goals into Actionable Results
Organizations universally set goals and strategic plans each year, aiming to grow revenue, increase efficiency, or launch innovative offerings. Leadership teams devote extensive energy to developing future visions, five-year horizons, and stretched objectives to motivate their workforce.
But the hard truth remains: lofty ambitions alone rarely catalyze actual change. For transformational plans to spark tangible impacts, organizations must bridge the gap between theoretical strategy and on-the-ground execution.
Table of Contents
1. The Planning Disconnect
Many goal-setting approaches prioritize inspiration over implementation. Leadership defines desires for the future: – become a $1 billion revenue company, penetrate emerging markets, and transform customer experiences through AI. Such ‘aim-big’ mindsets spark energy and provide directional guidance amid uncertainty.
However, most planning exercises fail to detail the nitty-gritty work required to achieve audacious results on the ground. People walk out of annual meetings jazzed about the future but without playbooks for activating it day-to-day. Vague aspirations then struggle to be converted into economic value.
2. Finding the Right Strategy
An OKR planning template offers one methodology to overcome this strategy/execution divide. OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, provide a template to cascade high-level goals into measurable, actionable metrics at every organizational level. This connects future milestones with present-moment decision-making, ensuring teams work synergistically towards overarching ambitions. With a strong goal architecture in place, inspiration more seamlessly fuels activation.
3. Why Actionability Matters
Transforming lofty aspirations into step-by-step execution plans brings several advantages:
- Alignment: With clear OKRs spanning functions, teams can coordinate priorities, resources, and timelines effectively. This fosters organization-wide momentum versus siloed efforts.
- Motivation:Breaking ambitious objectives into bite-sized key results is less daunting for individuals. Granular metrics maintain motivation amid long horizons.
- Focus: Concrete next steps prevent distraction from organizational shiny objects that capture attention yet deliver little value.
- Accountability: Quantifiable measures allow all stakeholders, from frontline individuals to CEOs, to track progress and course-correct in real-time if lagging.
With a strong goal architecture in place, inspiration more seamlessly fuels activation. But we still must apply rigorous execution principles—communication, tracking, agility, and celebration—to generate the hoped-for results.
4. Driving Change in Complex Systems
Large enterprises are multifaceted systems, with interdependent elements spanning processes, technology, and people. This complexity makes driving macro-level outcomes uniquely challenging. As legendary management thinker Peter Drucker noted, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Turning broad organizational change into economic returns requires carefully targeting the vital few interventions that catalyze outsized results. OKRs help leaders thoughtfully assess and sequence the projects that will structurally reinvent operations, remove friction from value chains, and upgrade talent capabilities over time. With clear transformations roadmaps in place, big goals become more grounded amid real-world constraints.
5. Sustaining the Journey
Finally, cascading OKRs across the hierarchy sustains strategic focus as leaders come and go. They provide continuity through inevitable ebbs and flows in the volatile, uncertain business climate. With institutionalized processes for regularly resetting, communicating, and reviewing objectives and key results, organizations stay centered on the handful of big bets that matter most while retaining the flexibility to evolve tactics as needed.
Annual goal setting is table stakes for contemporary organizations. But without concerted efforts to turn those goals into measurable action plans, little changes amid organizational complexity.
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