Saving Money

In these financially difficult times, where many businesses have had to make sacrifices and lay-offs due to COVID-19, saving money has never been more important. Your business needs to stay competitive and simply doesn’t have time for any financial distractions and problems. Sure, managing finances isn’t easy – but the good news is that there are plenty of nice little tips and tricks you can follow to improve your business and keep everything running smoothly.

So, if your business is struggling, or you’re simply looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve and prepare for the future, here’s a short (and proven) guide for you to follow that will help you to save money and be more stable moving forward.

Save on your energy prices

Businesses across the world have a ton of different costs to focus on, from marketing to product development. However, one key cost that is often ignored, or simply assumed to be less important, is energy.

Keeping your physical premises running isn’t cheap, especially if you have a lot of employees; there’s the heating, lighting, and various other equipment to consider. Even if you’re an entrepreneur who runs a business from your home, these costs are still important.

Therefore, you need to be smart by doing a commercial energy comparison, in which you compare the costs of different business providers to see where you can save the most money. This way, you’ll potentially save thousands on your annual energy bills – which is vital money that can be used to make business improvements.

Allow employees to work remotely

If COVID-19 has taught the world of business one important lesson, it’s that most employees can work safely and efficiently from their homes (although some industries want this trend to end). It now seems obvious that long commutes and offices packed with employees simply aren’t necessary in the era of modern technology.

Of course, working remotely isn’t possible for all businesses (for example, if you do door-to-door sales), so you need to sit down and analyse how plausible it is for your business model. If it’s possible, you should allow your employees the choice to work from home – this will drastically save costs, from office space to equipment.

Outsource in key areas

Outsourcing – where a 3rd party company takes care of certain business functions for you – is rapidly growing in popularity. This is because it saves time and (most importantly) money. You can outsource accounting, social media marketing, web security – pretty much anything. It’s entirely dependent on your situation and which areas you are weakest in.

Be more green

Modern businesses are going green to save costs, and there are some very smart ways you can do this, including turning off equipment when it isn’t in use, using energy-efficient bulbs, and not printing paper documents – instead, deal exclusively with digital documents (PDFs, word documents).

Finally, prepare for (unpredictable) future expenses

Throughout a difficult 2020 and 2021, the decisions made by businesses prove that they were not prepared for a mass global event on the scale of COVID-19.

Thankfully, businesses now know to expect the unexpected. In case of another major virus breakout (or another similar event), you must ensure that you have a contingency plan in place – which should include staff instructions and supply chain preparations. For example, if your supplier in another country can longer ship to you, you need a 2nd supplier ready.