成长中的9种成本降低技术

Do you know exactly how much money you are spending each month in your business?

如果您像大多数企业家一样，答案可能是否定的。

While setting budgets and auditing your expenses aren’t exactly the most exciting tasks, they can have a huge impact on how profitable your business is.

In this post, we’re sharing 9 cost-saving strategies you can implement, including:

1. Switch to remote working
2. 根据人才和经验而不是位置雇用
3. 外包非核心活动
4. 明确您如何花时间
5. Automate repetitive tasks and processes
6. Audit your expenses regularly
7. Decentralize your IT infrastructure and support
8. Use no-code tools
9. Use an ERP

1.切换到远程工作

One of the biggest expenses that most companies have is office space.

如果Covid-19的大流行教会了我们，那么有很多人可以在家中完成工作。

So, it would make sense that the number one most efficient cost-cutting strategy from our survey findings was encouragingremote work。

This means that you can either eliminate your office space costs altogether or significantly reduce them by downsizing your space.

“The most successful cost reduction we have implemented in our startup has been, by far, moving from expensive long-term office leases to remote work and co-working space,” says Ryan Patterson ofJobSage.“Our young employees love the social atmosphere of co-working and everyone (especially our employees who are parents) love the option of working from home. This allows us to easily scale as we hire new employees without an expensive lease, which is generally one of the largest costs for a startup company.”

安东尼·马丁（Anthony Martin）Choice Mutualadds, “The first option you have as a business today because of the consequences of the pandemic is to switch to a home office instead of renting office space. If your business has a larger presence online with little to no requirements for face-to-face customer interactions, then you could enable remote working and save costs by avoiding office rent. At the very least, you could opt for a smaller office space for those who still need to show up to work and let your other employees work from home. Another tactic that has gone very well for me is the use of automation software. I use book-keeping and workflow management software to cut costs, reduce errors and save time. In turn, this also helps my employees with productivity by getting mundane tasks out of the way and letting them focus on critical thinking. Workflow management software helps avoid unnecessary meetings, thereby saving time.”

2. Hire Based on Talent and Experience, not Location

除办公空间外，另一笔大费用是您的团队的薪水和福利套餐。

例如，如果您切换到遥远的公司，这意味着您现在可以访问全球人才库。If you have two candidates with equal talent and one lives in San Francisco and the other lives in Wichita, hiring the Wichita candidate makes more financial sense since you could pay them above-market rates for Kansas and still pay significantly less than what you’d have to pay the San Francisco person.

这是许多公司（例如联盟技术）采用的方法。

“One of the ways we’re able to be more cost-efficient is by hiring team members from all over the world,” says Jordan Brannon ofCoalition Technologies.“通过不限制我们的团队成员的位置，我们还有更多的招聘选择，我们可以与世界上最好的人合作。拥有远程劳动力也使我们能够最大程度地减少开销，并为补偿我们的团队成员分配更多资源。”

一些公司正在采用的另一种方法是聘请部分高管。

克里斯汀·麦加尔（Kristen McGarr）Adroit洞察力解释说：“通过雇用分数领导而不是全职，企业主正在利用大型公司所获得的知识和策略收益，而无需支付他们无法负担的价格。拥有首席财务官，首席销售官或首席运营官（通常企业主在许多其他职位上填补这些角色），许多以增长模式的企业可以从中受益，但是，他们无力将他们全职带入。

Fractional leaders come at a fraction of the cost, while still providing all the benefits for a growing business to achieve their growth goals that much faster.”

For example, it can cost upwards of $400,000 to hire a全职首席财务官，一家少于500万美元收入的企业无法负担全职CFO。但是，它们将从虚拟CFO中受益匪浅，该虚拟CFO可能每月收取1000至10,000美元的收费，并与多家企业合作。

3.外包非核心活动

节省团队成本的另一种方法是hire agencies and freelancers对于业务的某些部分。

“外包非核心活动，”年金专家。“这为不断增长的企业提供了更大的灵活性，可以根据需要进行需求或削减成本。您不必雇用尽可能多的全职员工或让人们闲置。投资自动化。自动化会产生短期成本，但从长远来看可以大大提高效率。它可以减少昂贵的错误并改善客户服务，因为您会降低可能影响客户的手动错误的风险。密切关注业务费用every month. Make sure you know what you’re spending on and whether it’s justified. This can help you identify wasted expenses quickly and cut them down.”

这通常需要围绕生产力的思维方式转变

Will Ward of Translation设备总部explains, “The technique that brought us the biggest success in terms of cost reduction was addressing our perspective on productivity. Typically, productivity is judged by aiming for each employee to hit x amount of hours per day. In reality, the best way to measure both individual and collective productivity is to view productivity as dynamic.

As a remote team, we encourage our employees touse time tracking技术，以及每周对自己的时间分段负责。我们知道，找到合适的工作流程，以及花费大量休息进行锻炼和充电，都是实际生产率的关键。转移我们对提高生产力的意义的影响，以及我们如何衡量生产率并允许我们的员工满足要求，这是我们降低成本尝试的最大提升。”

但是，正如许多企业意识到的那样，可以过度使用它，以至于您结束了太多任务或错误的任务并最终会减慢组织的速度。

4.明确您如何花时间

Another way to save time is to get clear on what you and your team are actually spending your time on each day.

You’ll likely be able to carve out responsibilities and tasks that you can delegate to a team member or a freelancer. So, you can spend more time on the biggest impact tasks.

“以我的经验时间坐下来evaluate nonessential activities that can be outsourced can yield excellent results,” says Benjamin Sweeney ofClydeBank Media LLC。“Not everything that your organization does in a day is closely tied to the aspect of your business that generates revenue.

Customer service, billing, admin work, warehousing, and transportation are all business aspects that may support your revenue creating centers but might be more efficiently (and cheaply) run by a third party who specializes in those activities.”

5.自动化重复任务和流程

By auditing your time, you’ll also likely find repetitive tasks that can be automated.

乔纳森·奥弗雷（Jonathan Aufray）说：“测试工具可以使您的流程自动化，获得时间并执行更少的重复任务。”Growth Hackers.“这听起来可能违反直觉，但要降低成本，您可能需要投资工具。不用担心，很多SaaS都有免费试用，因此您不必预先支付任何费用，并且只能购买帮助您降低成本的工具。

您想做的是找到您或您的团队所做的任务，这些任务是耗时和重复的。一旦知道这些，请找到解决这些特定问题的工具。然后，尝试一些此类工具以找出哪一种适合您想要的东西。一旦找到正确的软件，您的流程就会开始变得更加自动化，您将有更多时间花在重要的事情上而不是重复的任务上。”

安德鲁·鲁迪特斯（Andrew Ruditser）麦克斯伯斯特adds, “Some automation tools likeZapierand Hexomatic that can automate and streamline your workflow are beneficial in cutting costs. While yes, tools like these have an upfront cost, they can save hours on multiple tasksconnecting multiple apps at one time，这将导致较少的员工资源，并需要从事这些项目所需的薪水。”

6.定期审核您的费用

You should also make a habit of审查您的费用in your cloud accounting software on a regular basis. In particular, SaaS subscriptions can add up quickly especially as your team grows. It is not uncommon to realize you are paying for a bunch of SaaS apps that no one uses anymore or that you have like 5 separate Zapier accounts (that could be consolidated!)

“One simple thing every business should do is outline all their expenses,” says Sasha Matviienko ofCitadel.“令人难以置信的是，有多少公司错过了这个简单的机会。这可能会提供大量节省，尤其是对于没有生产成本的服务公司。”

您可以省钱的另一个地方只为您实际需要的云存储和服务器付费。

“The best cost reduction technique for a SaaS is to not pay for unused cloud data,” says Chelsea Cohen ofsostocked。“Only pay for the cloud space that you need and expand when required to do so.”

7.分散您的IT基础架构和支持

Another key area where you can save money, especially if you are a large remote team, is IT support.

“According to my experience, decentralizing IT support is one cost reduction technique that has proved to be most successful for a growing business,” says Jessica Robinson of讲话多头。“Having individual IT support and its maintenance is a costly affair. Along with this, hiring IT professionals to manage functions related to IT support and maintenance makes it even more costly.

Apart from salaries, companies also have to offer different types of benefits to them. On the other hand, an IT support service provider can save companies from bearing huge costs and take care of IT outcomes at much lower prices. They don’t even have to offer the IT Service company any sort of benefits, which also saves money. So, I feel that decentralizing IT is a successful cost reduction technique for growing businesses.”

8.使用无代码工具

You can also save money on development costs by using no-code tools whenever possible like for building MVPs or landing pages.

“Switching from traditional development to no-code tools has proven the most efficient cost-reduction technique in my experience,” says Lucie Loubet ofDesignware。“特别是对于科技公司和机构。研究表明，Web开发，移动开发和自动化项目的价格便宜4.6倍，使用无代码工具执行的速度更快。我个人要求开发机构过去创建30,000美元的网站。这些网站结果是平均外观且难以维护的网站。使用无代码工具，我现在能够以一小部分成本获得更好的结果。”

9. Use an ERP

For larger businesses, streamlining your tech stack by using an Enterprise Resource Planning platform (ERP) can make sense.

“Whether it’s a start-up or an established business, keeping costs under control is what ensures a higher profit margin,” says Eden Cheng ofPeopleFinderFree。“I always find ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning effective to keep costs under control. It’s a sort of automated inventory control helping businesses to prevent the hoarding of the resources, wastage where the product comes with an expiry date, and optimized use of every hired resource. If you’re in manufacturing or good dealing then ERP can help you keep your operational cost under control. As today’s high ERP systems come with CRM and SCM integration, it allows businesses to reduce the cost without impacting the service delivery. Usage of this tool gives businesses a clarity of need of resources and invest only in the essential ones.”

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The two biggest cost savings areas are office space and headcount. However, there is only some traction you can make there. Once you’ve done that, it is all about the basics of auditing your time and expenses.