Cost Saving

[hooper]

I was wondering if anyone had any helpful advise or links to articles about saving money in the office.  The CFO here has asked for my input with regards to this, and I've come up with a couple of things...like making the soda vending machine take money...(but I don't think that would make me very popular), and ordering less expensive copy paper (but I find that we are getting the cheapest as it is!).  Am racking my brains but am drawing a blank.  Any help would be great!

[Jackie G]

Nothing springs to mind but a couple of questions.

What is the purpose behind saving the money?

If it's saving the odd pound here and there (I know, I know, it all adds up over a year, especially with a consumable like paper which gets used loads!) then cheapest yes, although not necessarily always the best.

If however it's about saving lots of money I'm not sure you could do that unless you get your soda machine to take greater amounts of money for the soda etc than the goods are worth (which means nobody will use it unless desperate - which defeats the purpose)

Others may have some ideas, I think there was a posting about this before - CG, I seem to recall you had something about savings?

The other way is to do a deal with a supplier.  If you use a major supplier for a large percentage of supplies, see if they will do you a deal if you spend a certain amount over a year and they could give you some kind of 'kickback'

OR

for every x reams of paper, say, they give you 10 free



Jackie
www.iqps.org
Peer Moderator

[raindance]

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

[movinonup]

Hooper, one way we've begun saving money in our office is to use a new vendor for our shipping needs.  We found we could negotiate a lower rate based on increased usage and based on the fact that the "ship-to" facility uses the same carrier, almost exclusively.

We also save money by reducing customs brokerage fees using this company.
One other thing we've done is to often manage to reverse the charges on shipments that the receiving party is willing to pay for.  This requires them to give you their credit account number, of course, so it may be difficult to work this out.  
In our case, the receiving facility is testing the auto parts we send them, so they're willing to pay for the shipments.



Movinonup

[countrigal]

A cost-savings that is often overlooked is lights.  If possible, have lights turned off in locations when folks aren't there (ie: employee restrooms, empty offices).  Does housekeeping ensure that lights are off overnight?  Or are lights left on for hours after folks leave the office?  This can add up over time, especially if you do it in all offices of a larger company.

CountriGal
Peer Moderator