In business, the term “leaner” often refers to a company that become more efficient by the way of cutting costs in non-core areas. It’s trimmed the fat, so to speak. There are innumerable ways businesses can do this, most of which are specific to your industry or field. Here’s three sectors that almost all business can improve in though.
Switch to Interns
Many businesses turn to temporary employees during busy seasons or after having received a large order. While this is more cost-efficient than taking on more full-time employees, sourcing these individuals through third-party agencies can become costly. Mostly, companies tend to pass on backend works or tasks that require a lot of time to outsourcing companies (such as the ones at Peak Support) so that they can get their hands free for other important works. This could be beneficial to them in terms of operations perspective. Another alternative that you can incorporate to keep costs down and still stay productive is by contacting any local universities or colleges. As employment opportunities become more difficult for recent graduates, many schools are enthusiastic about making sure their students have some kind of experience in the workplace before they finish their courses. Some will even consider the placement to count as a part of the student’s academic credit for the semester.
Market your services effectively
All businesses need to market their services, but if you’re not marketing effectively, you’re going to be losing more money than it’s worth. The idea of marketing is to attract new customers, but spending more money on marketing than you’re getting from new customers is a sure way to failure. If you’re doing your own marketing in-house and it doesn’t seem to be working, consider outsourcing the process to Financial Marketing services or similar services within your own sector. Services that specialise in marketing for your sector may cost money, but they’re worth it if they attract new business for you. For example, if you are in the SaaS industry, you could work with someone like this growth marketing specialist in order to help you identify what strategies deliver you the most success, and make choices for future marketing campaigns based on this information.
Cut Down on Paper
Another area you should look to reduce costs in is physical media, particularly paper records. It’s estimated that the average office in the UK prints out around forty sheets of paper every day. This means that it isn’t uncommon for even SMEs to quickly become overrun. Not only does this start to become a large expense, it also requires a large amount of office real estate and spare time to actively keep everything organised. Fortunately, with the advent of modern technologies like cloud storage, going paperless is easy. Both Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive service offer 15GB of storage for free, with further expansion aimed at businesses. You’ll now be able to access your documents anytime from a variety of different devices, such as your PC, smartphone, or tablet. If you’d still like to have an original paper copy as backup, consider outsourcing the role to a specialist such as TNT Business Solutions. TNT work with over one million documents every week and can handle all your scanning, data capture, and mailing needs, saving you up to 50% in the process.
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Use Social Media
Finally, if you’re business is struggling to establish its brand you should consider moving away from traditional marketing methods and placing more emphasis on social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are by far the most popular way people communicate with each other in the digital age. Industry leaders have caught on to this too, with 77% of the top Fortune 500 active 77% active on Twitter and 70% engaging with their customers through Facebook. Maintaining an engaging online presence doesn’t have to be a big responsibility either. Use third-party clients like Hootsuite to keep on top of everything more easily, as this aggregates all your feeds into one location.
