Gartner, is a global research and advisory firm, their research shows that leading companies take a proactive and strategic approach to cost optimisation. It better equips them to sustain through headwinds and unknowns, like the uncertainty and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2008 global recession.
Cost optimisation is a business-focused, continuous discipline to drive spending and cost reduction, while maximising business value.
It includes, obtaining the best pricing and terms for all business purchases by:
Isn’t that what we should all be doing in this scary ‘new normal’ world? How is a business to survive this current climate without smart decisions on saving and streamlining in order to protect the bottom line?
Budget pressure requires a rapid response, especially during turbulent times. But rash decisions can jeopardise your longer-term objectives for success and growth.
Cost optimisation is not a new concept, but the theory lends itself to essentially reducing costs and streamlining processes for every business.
Gartner sees the pandemic response in three phases. The duration of each phase will vary by country, industry and enterprise — and even by business unit, product or service. The phases are defined primarily by what’s happening at each stage:
Immediate actions focused on keeping people safe and essential business functions operating. This relatively short period is marked by high effort and potentially chaotic activity
More organised/coordinated effort to stabilise operations. Medium duration.
Extended period marked by strategic, durable execution across the organisation.
The pandemic may have wiped your strategy slate clean (or at least it feels that way), but you’ve also garnered invaluable experience. Most businesses will be heading towards the renewal stage by now. So, it’s time to bring together your executive team and use those lessons to reconfigure your business and operating models for a new reality.
A strategic and programmatic approach to cost optimisation is required, in which you know and evaluate the risks and benefits of your cost initiatives, for now and for tomorrow.
Learn to conduct operations processes and workflows in new, repeatable, scalable ways.
Use lessons learned and emergent patterns from prior phases to coalesce around a new foundation and way forward.
First, you need to determine exactly where and how the crisis has stretched and broken your existing models — and where the risks and opportunities lie as a result.
Identify capabilities you need to:
Principal is offering free workshops to help you with cost optimising, we have many ways in which we can streamline your business processes; whether that’s with managed print services, document management, or finance solutions, and that’s just to name a few.
This includes everything from your everyday printing to document management and IT security.
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