Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of financial Snickens. I'm your host, Alisa McCabe. And we are talking about creating efficiency and making this your year of efficiency. So Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said that 2023 was going to be his year of leanness. So what happened? He. Um, he made so many changes that were effective that they're staying and his stock prices went up 20 percent and he is keeping his company lean.
So how can you create efficiencies and We're going to talk about what the three steps you can do to help your company become a lean mean fighting machine and create success in 2024. So the three, the three things that we're going to talk about are identifying unnecessary expenses and what the techniques are for [00:01:00] getting lean.
And how do you maintain quality throughout this process? So first identify. Unnecessary expenses conduct a comprehensive expense review. So what does that mean? So that means that you're going to run a profit and loss report. You're going to take a look at. all of your business expenses. You are going to categorize expenditures and, and assess how they impact your company.
Do you have subscriptions that you're not using anymore? You need to identify areas where you can reduce your expenses without compromising quality. You should have And also a review of all the apps that you use. So there's been this trend towards many of the apps starting to encompass lots of other features.
So like [00:02:00] QBO has improved and added features that take the place of some of the outside apps. Next, you want to review your relationship with suppliers and anyone else, so consider exploring alternative suppliers or even going out and getting new quotes for insurance. We have found over the years that you can Get a reduction of about 10 percent on insurance if you shop around.
Also, assess your operational process. So, look at your workflows and see where there's inefficiencies and redundancies. Streamlining your workflow can lead to significant cost savings and enhance your overall efficiency. Okay, so here's some techniques for getting lean. Embrace technology, invest in solutions that will enhance efficiency.[00:03:00]
Automation is the way to go. If you've ever listened to anything I've said, I'm all about automation. So digital tools can streamline processes and they can reduce
manual costs, which is cost savings. And sometimes they can even improve the quality and the consistency of your services. Also, one that might surprise you is employee training and development.
This is a cost that when you invest in your team, it can have a long term cost savings and improved customer satisfaction. How? Because you can empower the team to be more efficient. and effective. Thereby, you do not have to, uh, invest as much once you've done the initial training and your customers will be happy when your employees are happy.
The next thing you can consider is outsourcing, [00:04:00] outsourcing certain tasks or functions to people who specialize in this. Why do this? Because it's a very cost effective way to have access to experts without the need of having them in house. The cost that you have for in house, you have to pay employer tax.
You have to pay someone to oversee them. You have to have HR involved. There's lots of things when you have an employee, when you outsource. You are getting an expert in that industry, you do not have to pay any of the employer costs, and you don't have to worry about HR, and you can fire them if you want to, and there isn't any repercussions.
So, Um, doing outsourcing can reduce your costs and you can tap into experts. So third, how do you maintain quality throughout this process? It's great to reduce [00:05:00] expenses, but you really don't want the quality of your work to suffer. So if you prioritize the cost cutting measures and you focus on what is going to impact your business, and.
and what the potential is for maintaining quality. Focus on areas where reductions can be made without compromising core aspects of your product or services. You should also see, seek feedback from your customers. Engage in your customer base to understand what their priorities are and what they have as expectations of you.
This can help guide you on cost cutting features and it can ensure that your adjustments align with customer preferences and you're not compromising the perceived value of what you're offering. Also, establish and monitor key quality metrics to ensure that cost cutting measures do not adversely [00:06:00] affect the quality of your services.
You need to regularly assess customer satisfaction and service performance. So what you can do and what we've done in our company is we send out surveys to
our clients for customer satisfaction. This will be extremely important when you are taking cost cutting measures to make sure that they aren't impacting your clients.
So cost cutting for small businesses is such a nuanced process. It really, you really need to have working with strategic. Decision making while you are doing this cost cutting. So if you start to identify all these unnecessary expenses and you can do it without sacrificing quality, you will have a healthier business and you can maintain these cost cutting measures and have an efficiency year and maybe have as good a year as [00:07:00] Mark Zuckerberg had.
It's not really just about saving money; it's optimizing the resources that you have and ensuring long term sustainability and success.
