Is your business struggling? If you are a new business, chances are that you are not firmly grounded and that you have probably already given away more money than you needed to. This is a common issue with businesses around the world, and even those that have decades of experience behind them rarely have an optimized budget. Don’t get me wrong, wasting some of your funds on unnecessary things doesn’t necessarily mean that your business will go under. If your earnings are sufficient to remain afloat through the entire thing, then you will have no reasons to resolve these matters instantaneously. After all, if your growth is spiking, it would probably be much smarter to continue growing and take care of these things later on. On the other hand, if you still haven’t caught your break and are still waiting on that first significant breach into your market of interest, then you need to think about your finances and economize where you can.
For this particular purpose, I have composed a list of often overlooked places where you can efficiently economize. As you get bigger, identifying the weak points of your business, especially in the financial department, gets you more and more things done. Let’s dive in!
Overtime Work – Bad or Good?
I’m not saying that you should not pay your employees for overtime, we aren’t in the middle ages anymore. I am talking about making a decision if overtime pays off for you in the long run. In other words, do you really need people working overtime and does that work provides a return of investment. Simply put, is that overtime work worth the extra cash you are putting out? If not, then stick to regular hours and don’t introduce overtime as an option.
Communication – Needs and Proper Solutions
This one is a bit tricky to handle. It all depends how much of an active internal and external communication you actually need. It also depends on the number of people you have working for you and the number of clients or customers you have. For smaller businesses oriented around longer projects, that are doing business with only a handful of clients, it makes more sense to economize using Skype, e-mails and other Web based communication solutions, but if your needs go outside these borders, you might need some sort of call center service. Luckily, you can do this through a Web based service in order to resolve these issues. VoIP allows you to avoid large infrastructural investments while retaining all the functionality of a call center.
Energy – Letting Your Money Fly out the Window
Energy efficiency is not something that is a popular subject only in the business sphere. The green initiative is very active these days, and if you haven’t, then you definitely should tune into the more recent events. There are more than a few things that you might need to look into:
- Office temperature control:
The same as any home, the energy bills for the office can stack up rather nicely. IF your office heating and cooling systems are bad or the isolation is of low quality, you are at risk of constantly wasting money on temperature adjustment. In these cases, either man up or invest into resolving these issues or relocate. There really isn’t any other valid option.
- Lights:
In an office with two or three shifts of employees, lights can become major energy consumers. LED light bulbs are the optimal road you can take in order to avoid unnecessary boosts to your electricity bill.
- Vehicles, gas bills and overall travel:
If your company owns vehicles and/or if the work involves a lot of traveling, both international and within your base country, you might want to pay a bit more attention. Maintain your vehicles on a regular basis so they don’t spend more gas than when they were brand new. Make sure that you track for which purposes your employees use these vehicles so that you can avoid abuse. If you pay for transport, like airplane flights and rentals, make sure that you are choosing the best possible options. The biggest losses happen due to a lack of planning.
Of course, keeping a constant watch on your bottom line is a must, and having a professional accountant to help you with taxes and deductions so you don’t pay more than you should is also a must. It’s all about identifying issues and resolving them as fast as possible. There simply isn’t another way!