Some simple ways to reduce your business costs.
1. Do I have faulty or outdated equipment that is causing irritation, and/or increased repair expense?
Example: You have a worn out printer that continually jams, trashing documents, and jamming-up the print queue. This requires excessive support assistance. If the cost of repairs and support will or could exceed cost of replacing the printer, it’s time to look at replacing it.
2. Am I leveraging the job experience and skills of my existing staff?
Example: During a POS software training session with a large retailer, I noticed that some of their sales clerks seemed to pick-up on things much more quickly than others. After inquiring into their previous job experience, I found that I had before me:
- A retired business owner with an MBA.
- A retired bank software training manager with an MIS degree.A retired accountant.
- A retired Army Colonel.Most of them took the current job because they were bored, or needed some extra spending money to supplement their retirement income.
All of them had held jobs that gave them valuable management, and personnel training experience, none of which was being utilized by the store managers. This was costing the company lost time, and ultimately more money.
3. Do I have the right people in the right positions?
I’ve seen a lot of examples of well meaning, dedicated people assigned to jobs for which they had little or no training or simply no aptitude.
Some bad examples are:
- Assigning an extreme analytical, with poor people skills to greet store visitors.- This kind of person would probably be better suited to an inventory or accounting position.
- Assigning a tactile, mechanically inclined person to bagging customer purchases in a home improvement store. – This person might be better utilized in the tool department, or running the forklift.
- Assigning an aggressive, overbearing, hot tempered person to be a manager. – Isolating this person to a position with limited people contact, or lower stress job, might have be a better idea.