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Whether the media labelled "economic crisis" is more hype than harm, it's
still good PR for you to be thinking about ways your company can save money in a
time when all costs are under the microscope.
Earn yourself some major brownie points this week by taking some proven cost
saving ideas to your boss.
1. A 'work from home day' once a week. A survey of over 200 companies last month
by the Computing Technology Industry Association showed that nearly 60% percent
of companies polled reported seeing cost savings from reduced use of
office-related materials and resources while 67% percent said employees were
more productive, largely because they spent less time getting to and from work.
They were also found to be more productive as they weren't getting disturbed by
co-workers. Workforce mobility is good for employees and good for your bottom
line.
2. Provide employees access to make personal calls. While most businesses have mobile fleet profiles to
charge employees for calls made before 8am and after 6pm (for example),
providing your employees with a code to dial ahead of a personal number will
let them to make use of their work mobile for personal calls. It's zero cost to
your business and means your employees don't have the hassle of carrying two
phones around, plus they'll generally do the right thing by you and pay for
their own personal calls.
3. Form a buying consortium.
Head office might be buying your stationary, but you might consider a buying
consortium between yourself and another company. You'll increase your buying
power on goods and services and save money at the same time. You can really think outside the box on this one,
could you share a helpdesk with another company? Or office space? A 2007 Hackett
Group study found that 65 percent of companies utilising shared services cut
their costs by more than 20 percent, while 27 percent saved more than 40 percent
on office operational costs.
4. Save on printing supplies. Launch pop-ups which list associated job costs to
inform users how much their printing jobs will cost. This will get all employees
thinking twice before printing off a multiple page document when they're only
interested in one page. You can also use a fax-to-email program so you're not
printing faxes. You also have them in an electronic form allowing for easier
storage without the space.
5. Review services for scalability.
There isn’t much excuse not to go with vendors that allow you to scale
everything from software licences to bandwidth to mobile phones. With software
and applications, it’s as simple as switching from site licenses to per-seat or
per-user deals. Vendors should be willing to do this for you if they want to
keep your business again when times are better and you scale back up again.
6. Switch to phone/web based conferences.
There are a host of advantages in using technology to hold your conferences, and
they're not just about saving money on travel. Obviously the travel, hotel and
transfer costs of your guests are eliminated, but you'll also find that when you
teleconference you don't have the cost of hiring a venue, you're not printing up
brochures or handouts (you're emailing them instead) and you're not catering.
You also have the opportunity can create a unique collaborative experience
and world wide reach with a web and phone based conferences. Imagine a
experience where many people can view and collaborate on a document in real time
and you'll never have the issue of a couple of talkers distracting those around
them which is obviously counterproductive.
Where to from here?
Got a great cost saving idea?
Tell us about it.
Read research on how other companies
are saving money during an economic downturn.
Talk to Macquarie
Telecom today about a cost saving ideas specifically for your business.
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