Introduction to Business Cost Reduction
Reducing business costs is essential to maximizing profitability. Accounting, logistics, human resources: the tasks involved are essential, but also costly and time-consuming. However, it is possible to reduce related costs without compromising the efficiency and quality of the company's work or services. This article therefore invites you to explore several strategies to reduce the administrative costs of your business, while maintaining its productivity and profitability.*
Analyze team productivity
First of all, it is essential to precisely define the problem points. This helps determine areas that require improvement, to develop action plans that aim to improve the overall performance of the team, and by extension the company.
After having redefined your objectives, you can then measure the performance achieved in each sector that interests you. If we take the administrative example, you can use different metrics relevant to this situation, such as time spent on tasks, number of meetings or projects, error rate, etc. These results should then be analyzed using graphs and tables for better visualization, which will allow you to identify unnecessarily time-consuming tasks. Using Pareto's law will be particularly useful here to draw up a diagram and establish a hierarchy for all these actions.
Deploy digital tools
If you want to reduce the administrative costs of your business, you can opt for automation of repetitive and low value-added tasks. Many tools, like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems , today independently take care of inventory or project management, invoicing, payroll or document management (electronic storage, digitization). . These latter tasks, in addition to occupying employees' time, also include a significant proportion of human errors, which can influence the smooth running of processes within the company.
Online collaboration tools facilitate data sharing and communication between different departments of the company, which limits the loss of information. They also offer the possibility of real-time monitoring. In the era of Industry 4.0, IoT platforms and the use of artificial intelligence allow you to monitor resource usage and equipment performance in real time, while analyzing data to optimize maintenance time. Collecting data at the source will save you valuable time. Finally, visual analysis tools provide valuable support for team decisions, but also for the managerial sphere.
Digital Factory offers you a library of high-performance tools, rigorously selected from the best options available on the market and available in a wide range of prices, to help you digitize and automate your administrative tasks.
Unleash employee potential
Reducing a company's administrative costs not only improves its financial performance, but also that of its employees. The latter are thus freed from repetitive and time-consuming tasks, now having the opportunity to transform this time for invention and innovation. To do this, it remains essential to measure the satisfaction of your employees, in order to implement actions that will help them return to their optimal state of productivity.
If you plan to hold a meeting about this, make sure it is aligned with your new goals. If these meetings are essential for the quality of teamwork, but also for the life of the company, it is important that they remain anchored in a goal of productivity. To do this, we advise you to follow these few tips:
- Clearly define the objective of the meeting and immediately share it with participants
- Invite only those people involved in the objective of the meeting, so as not to slow down the course of the latter - Prepare an agenda and set a time limit for the meeting (favoring short sessions) - Encourage the participation of all members
- Use collaboration and visual analysis tools to illustrate ideas and think together: interactive whiteboards, screen sharing software, graphics, etc.
- Assign actions to each employee based on their profile and skills, giving them all the necessary information, including expected deadlines
- Directly validate all points at the end of the meeting
These best practices will allow you to help your team achieve the set objectives more quickly and more effectively. Generally speaking, the implementation of these different actions, whether cost reduction or clear procedures, maximizes the company's performance and minimizes errors. Automating administrative tasks then allows employees to focus on higher value-added tasks, which require both human imagination and innovation. Boosted by the execution of rewarding actions, employees focus on finding solutions, when technology takes care of repetitive tasks, including communication and coordination, in a very short time, and at lower cost. Many innovative tools are available exclusively on Digital Factory: Lean, QHSE, MES 4.0, IOT… Discover our catalog by clicking here!
