The key to a successful small business is ramping up productivity and keeping expenditure to a minimum. In the course of day-to-day business, companies tend to forget that keeping control on costs is as important as gaining customers. Tough economic situations mandate judicious use of resources, and only those businesses who accomplish this are successful. Let us consider the case of Milind Aher, a successful small business owner from Kolkata, who took certain steps to optimize the expenses of his business.
Right financing
Finance is the lifeblood of business. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that the most appropriate mode of financing, with the most competitive interest rate, is chosen to cover any financial need. Borrowing money at low interest rate can help a firm save big on a yearly basis.
Aware of this fact, Milind ran a financial assessment of his firm and found that his earlier mode of finance was not cost efficient. A quick rejig of his borrowing sources saved quite a bit on his interest.
Aiming to help businesses to optimize their spending, NBFCS offer business loans at extremely competitive rates that help a business get the right type of financing at the best possible price point.
Savings on software
Proper planning in terms of software can lead to significant savings. There are many tricks that the business owner can employ in this aspect to reduce expenditure. Firstly, investing in cloud-based software that lets you use it for an annual fee is more feasible than buying servers to increase wen storage space. Moreover, cloud access enables operation from anywhere, thus improving an organisation’s flexibility.
Milind use open-source apps for his business requirements. They are free and have all the features needed for the business. He primarily uses them for image editing, document editing and accounting purposes. Usage of such software saves the cost of paying for the expensive paid ones.
Additional read: How to create a growth plan for your small business?
Lean meetings
Meetings are a great way to facilitate exchange of ideas and also help employees catch up with current events in the company. Meetings can also be an expensive affair in terms of travel and costs associated with hosting. But, meetings are also necessary for the flow of ideas. The answer is swapping a physical meet for a virtual one.
Employees in Milind’s firm participate in meetings online through various video conferencing tools such as Skype, TeamViewer, WebRoom, etc. This has not only saved cost of extensive travelling, but has also developed a networked workforce. The employees of Milind’s firm are now able to interact with each other in real time, increasing the speed of the exchange of ideas and decision-making.
Trim maintenance costs
This is one of the areas that is often overlooked, but can save a lot of cost to businesses. In case of Milind, he analysed the maintenance cost of his business establishment. He found that certain utilities like cleaning services can be scheduled in a better to save cost.
The trick to make this initiative successful lies in finding out a proper schedule for the maintenance activities without affecting employee comfort and satisfaction.
Additional read: 5 Tips to improve your odds of getting a small business loan
Go green!
When a business ‘goes green’, it not only shows that it cares for the environment, but is energy efficient too. Going green basically means that your office is environmentally friendly and has adopted changes in pursuit of saving energy. Reduction in energy usage will positively impact your bills and reduce overall costs.
Milind found several ways to do this for his firm. Some of these are to replace the office’s lighting with energy-efficient LEDs and switching to paperless operation by connecting all devices to a location on the cloud platform. The latter resulting in savings from paper cost and ink cartridges, and storage space for physical files.
Conclusion
The steps given above are just a few of the numerous ways a small business owner can save on his or her outgo. As is evident from the case of Milind, these steps are quite cost-effective and do not impact the workings of the business in a negative way. The resources thus saved through these measures can be pledged in more important areas like employee training, marketing campaigns, cyber security and product designing.
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