Reducing your unnecessary business costs

When you’re busy running your business, it’s easy to overlook small costs.

These costs might seem insignificant, like multiple subscriptions few use, but they can add up, leading to unnecessary business costs that drain your bottom line.

One of the major ways you can go about reducing your unnecessary business costs is to conduct an audit of all the technology you use.

Reducing unnecessary business costs via a subscription audit

Run through all of your business subscriptions. You may find you are using overlapping tools like two different project management tools which serve the same function.

Consider the training costs and time wasted for staff trying to learn to use multiple tools, as they could be spending this time selling your goods and services to customers instead.

Next, do research to see if you can use one technology tool for more than one function, thereby reducing the unnecessary business costs of multiple subscriptions.

For example, Microsoft Teams allows for direct messaging and sharing and storing documents.

Another example of a good multi-function tool is Basecamp, which includes project management features and a chat function for team communication.

Reducing unnecessary business costs via role clarity

Another way to cut down on unnecessary business costs is by ensuring clarity in job roles.

In SMEs, it’s common for employees to juggle multiple roles, yet this can lead to work duplication, errors and miscommunication, meaning some tasks don’t get done in time, or at all, leading to wasted time and money.

You, as the business owner, can avoid workload duplication and mistakes by ironing out job roles and making responsibilities clearer.

This is where a clear and easy-to-use project management tool can be useful to highlight where an employee’s responsibility on a project begins and ends.

Job roles should also be made clear at the onboarding stage, so new employees know their responsibilities and don’t forget about tasks or duplicate the work of others.

You must also be clear on whether employees are needed for all meetings. Consistently inviting employees to meetings when they aren’t needed costs your business time and money, as that employee could have been working instead.

If employees don’t have clear, defined roles, they might be stretched too thin and could experience burnout, which can lead to prolonged absences or leaving the business, costing you money as you need to find a replacement or temporary cover for when they are off sick.

There are other ways to reduce unnecessary costs in your business, such as downsizing office space, going fully remote via software like Zoom and Teams, or buying refurbished office equipment instead of new office items.

Depending on the state of your business, you will be best placed to determine what the necessary and unnecessary business costs are. For example, if your team is significantly smaller than it was, perhaps a physical office space is no longer necessary.

Once you reduce your unnecessary business costs, you’ll not only recoup savings to drive your business forward, especially in tougher economic times, but you can also use some of those savings to reward your employees, whether that’s a bonus, a meal out or training courses.

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