Stationery, postage, printing, telephone calls, internet access, IT support can really cost a lot. Add travel, meetings, corporate hospitality, video conferencing ....

Spending a bit of time reviewing the costs and suppliers, and sourcing other suppliers offering more competitive prices, can help save money.  

My company had a good look at this sort of expenditure about 18 months ago.  The first thing we did was to involve everyone in discussion and asked people to come up with cost saving ideas in their departments. This means that everyone is involved and has "ownership" of decisions.

We have managed to eliminate wastage and to really look at whether we need things.  Two important questions were: do we need it? can we achieve the same thing at a better price? I don't, however, approve of meanness and believe firmly that sometimes you have to spend to get. Everyone should have the things they need to get their job done efficiently and to a high standard.

We have sourced a cheaper phone service, decreased our use of stationery by eliminating things we don't really need and using email more for transporting meeting documents. A lot of our meetings are scheduled so that they don't include lunches - they either end before lunch or start afterwards. Travel costs have also been drastically cut - no first class travel ever for any one and travel has to be justified.  If a telephone conference is a cheaper option  than long distance travel to a meeting and produces the same results, then we use that.

These are just a few thoughts which I hope you find helpful.

Raindance