It's a known fact that the bottom-line in the business world is making money and cutting costs. In this economy it takes more than just the money that your company brings in to make your business profitable; making money has to have the partnership of cutting costs to make a difference. But by the same token, businesses need to better manage the money that they waste, and find ways to rise to the top of their industry, without breaking the bank.



As a manager or owner, your objective should be improving the business' bottom-line, whether its finding ways to increase sales or cut costs. In any business, once you start auditing all of your programs, systems and accounts, its inevitable that you will find significant bleeding of revenues, especially if you have never put your own business under the microscope. One of the best business practices is to frequently audit your individual department's expenses and time/labor costs to find ways to efficiently operate and increase your revenues. Once you begin to eliminate waste (both time and expenses), you will see your business start making money from the inside out, right before your eyes.

One of the best practices I have seen yet is organizing cost-cutting teams. This will fully engage your employees and keep middle management on the same page as senior management. By tasking each team with bringing innovative, cost cutting ideas to the table, your employees will feel empowered and part of the success of the company. It could start with simple ideas, like switching from paper to actual dishes in the break room. You save the cost of the paper products, and the landfills of unnecessary waste. It's a win-win!

You have to beware of superficial savings, however. You can spend more man-hours and labor costs to only save a few pennies on a process or vendor cost.

Here is a glance at the areas of business structure that are most often identified as being candidates for a improvement:

* Excessive department-to-department competition. If you have a business that has multiple departments, just be mindful that once you begin your cost cutting endeavors, department heads become competitive and somewhat suspicious of other departments. Its been a common practice to cut costs in their own department, they try to shift processes and procedures to another. This actually creates an elevation in overhead and can be costly at the department level; not to mention the frustration for management and co-workers.

* Communication breakdowns. If communications between departments or people along the process chain are impaired, a process can lose steam and sometimes stop mid-cycle, waiting for the miscommunication to be discovered and corrected. The delay in progress could result in the finished project getting to the client and the client paying for that finished product. The first order of business is keeping your managers or department heads in sync with one another and their employees. With our advanced technologies, there are really no excuses.

* IT infrastructure. Again, with the technology at our fingertips, there is no excuse for out dated computer programs or equipment. To operate a clean running machine, you need the latest and greatest technology for your industry that seamlessly integrates your departments. Standardization and integration of data and systems will introduce huge efficiencies to the process.

It could be that you have been in business for years and years, operating at the same level, the same cost points. Auditing your business for improvement of workflow and revenues is the absolute best thing you can do for your own success.