9. Renegotiate contracts
If you already service and input contracts in place, take a good look at all of them and see whether there is scope for a renegotiation on rates. Can you do with a lower level of service on service contracts? If deployment of manpower is included in these contracts (like manning point-of-sale positions) can you do with fewer people? If sales is down, obviously you can. What about your courier and other delivery mechanisms? Maybe you can do with a slightly longer delivery window. Can increasing the delivery window from, say, three days all-India to five get you a lower rate?
Managed service contracts and annual maintenance contracts are another set that should be up for closer scrutiny. Can the service windows be relaxed to reduce costs?
And while at it, be prepared to renegotiate contracts others have signed with you. Now that you know about it, be prepared beforehand, at least for key clients, with what you can offer and, whereever possible, try and ensure that you do not end up with nasty surprises like the cancellation of a critical order.
10. Can mergers make your business stronger?
Typically we tend to consider a merger as one of our last options. The problem with this approach is that, firstly, we will be negotiating with our backs to the wall, and, more importantly, at a point when the valuation will be at its lowest. So, without being emotional or superstitious about it, it is important that we do not keep this option for the last minute.
Basic questions to have an answer in hand include: Who are the possible suitors? What are they likely to be looking for? How all can a merger improve your business ? Can a part of the business be merged/sold? What level of control of ops are you willing to accede?
What about establishing a few initial contacts with the prospects if you do not already have them?
11. Reduce travel and overnight stay
Travel has just become way more costlier, and airports have moved far away from the city in at least two cities, Hyderabad and Bangalore. What this means is that you are going to be spending more time and money on travel and overnight stay. All the more reason why in tough times such as these you should look at saving on both time and money.
Three tools come to mind immediately that help achieve this objective. Audio conferencing, Web conferencing, and video conferencing. Actually, all three are variations of the same theme – remote conferencing. All telecom service providers have phone bridge services that multiple people can join in at the same time and hold a conference. One person has to setup the conference and others dial into a given number to join the call. Here at DARE, we have tried voice bridges for both national and international voice conferences. Our experience is that this works best for groups of under 10 people if all are expected to be talking. If, however, only one person is going to be talking at any given time, the number of callers logged in can be really large without any problems. Web conferencing as offered by Webex, among others, lets you share your desktop with other participants. This is useful if you have to run a presentation or you have to demonstrate a software application. Web conferencing applications also support text chat. Typically, you combine a Web conference with an audio bridge for best results. Video conferencing is capital intensive to set up afresh, but there are third party networks like the one run by Reliance. The only problem is that you have to move to their Webworld to conduct the video conference. One of the limitations of video conferencing is that it is not easy to interconnect different systems. Which means you cannot easily dial out to clients’ video conferencing system from yours and have a conference. Therefore, if your travel is mostly for client meetings, then video conferencing may not be a cheaper alternative.
And while on the topic of travel and stay, what about sharing rooms?
Sabsebolo is a recently launched free conference service by Yogesh Pate and Sabeer Bhatia. It enables as many as 10 parties to listen to or participate in a conference call you make – for free. Besides this free service, they also provide paid plans and business plans and fax to email service. Binesh Kutty at the DARE blogs
12. Reduce printing and posting costs
If your business involves printing and posting a large volume of bills every month, consider emailing them as PDF. This saves you printer costs, paper costs, electricity and postage costs, not to speak of manpower and time costs. Many banks and telecom service providers today offer both printed and electronic versions of their bills to customers; but may small businesses and single entrepreneur initiatives have gone a step further and completely done away with paper bills. No reason why you should not join them. And while at it, add a line at the bottom to each PDF bill to show your concern for the environment with a message like: “Save the environment; please do not print multiple copies of this bill unless it is absolutely essential .”
On the subject of printing, have you considered reducing the quality of paper that you use for your marketing literature and for bill printing? A small reduction in the quality of paper used – a reduction in grammage or a shift from art paper to normal paper will result in substantial savings while having no effect on your business’ image.
Another point we have already touched upon is whether you really have to use that costly courier? Can a cheaper local courier work out? If you have to absolutely deliver printed material, what about sending electronic documents to your local offices for printing and local delivery instead of printing and couriering from a central office? Savings in courier costs could be significant.
What about documents for internal customers: your employees? Why not save some paper there by putting them up on an intranet? Don’t have one? You can create one for free on Ning. And here is something that most organizations do anyway – recycle ink cartridges.
13. Implement open source software
There is a saying that when times get tough, open source gets going. Why? The logic is simple: IT budgets are amongst the first to get cut and at the same time the pressure from software companies (who have their own huge targets) to license software goes up. The way out? Open source.
How usable is open source? A majority of the Websites in the world run on Apache, an open source software. Tomcat and Jboss are widely used application servers. The DARE Website is implemented on Joomla, another open source software. The emailing system for the Website runs on yet another open source software – PHP List. We use another open source software LimeSurvey . This article is written using OpenOffice.org, an open source office suite. Some of my article concepts are developed using Freemind and open source mind mapper. Some of my basic graphics work is done using Paint.Net. We run our network asset management on SpiceWorks, and use many other open source tools for network monitoring and management.
If you are considering this approach, then there are a few things that you must keep in mind. Open source does not necessarily mean free. There are implementation and maintenance costs that you will have to pay. And many open source software have paid versions that are more feature rich or offer assured support. The biggest cost differential comes in the per-seat licensing fee. Most paid software operate on such a basis. Most open source application software do not either charge a license fee or charge a low fee. That is where your savings actually come from.
14. Reduce telephone costs
Communication costs are never insignificant for any business. If you have a lot of international calling to do, have you checked out Skype phones or services like World Phone that give you cheaper international telephony?
For calls within the country, did you know that you get better rates with closed user groups?
Soruce: http://www.dare.co.in/strategy/business-essentials/25-tips-to-manage-through-the-slowdown/Page-2.htm
If you already service and input contracts in place, take a good look at all of them and see whether there is scope for a renegotiation on rates. Can you do with a lower level of service on service contracts? If deployment of manpower is included in these contracts (like manning point-of-sale positions) can you do with fewer people? If sales is down, obviously you can. What about your courier and other delivery mechanisms? Maybe you can do with a slightly longer delivery window. Can increasing the delivery window from, say, three days all-India to five get you a lower rate?
Managed service contracts and annual maintenance contracts are another set that should be up for closer scrutiny. Can the service windows be relaxed to reduce costs?
And while at it, be prepared to renegotiate contracts others have signed with you. Now that you know about it, be prepared beforehand, at least for key clients, with what you can offer and, whereever possible, try and ensure that you do not end up with nasty surprises like the cancellation of a critical order.
10. Can mergers make your business stronger?
Typically we tend to consider a merger as one of our last options. The problem with this approach is that, firstly, we will be negotiating with our backs to the wall, and, more importantly, at a point when the valuation will be at its lowest. So, without being emotional or superstitious about it, it is important that we do not keep this option for the last minute.
Basic questions to have an answer in hand include: Who are the possible suitors? What are they likely to be looking for? How all can a merger improve your business ? Can a part of the business be merged/sold? What level of control of ops are you willing to accede?
What about establishing a few initial contacts with the prospects if you do not already have them?
11. Reduce travel and overnight stay
Travel has just become way more costlier, and airports have moved far away from the city in at least two cities, Hyderabad and Bangalore. What this means is that you are going to be spending more time and money on travel and overnight stay. All the more reason why in tough times such as these you should look at saving on both time and money.
Three tools come to mind immediately that help achieve this objective. Audio conferencing, Web conferencing, and video conferencing. Actually, all three are variations of the same theme – remote conferencing. All telecom service providers have phone bridge services that multiple people can join in at the same time and hold a conference. One person has to setup the conference and others dial into a given number to join the call. Here at DARE, we have tried voice bridges for both national and international voice conferences. Our experience is that this works best for groups of under 10 people if all are expected to be talking. If, however, only one person is going to be talking at any given time, the number of callers logged in can be really large without any problems. Web conferencing as offered by Webex, among others, lets you share your desktop with other participants. This is useful if you have to run a presentation or you have to demonstrate a software application. Web conferencing applications also support text chat. Typically, you combine a Web conference with an audio bridge for best results. Video conferencing is capital intensive to set up afresh, but there are third party networks like the one run by Reliance. The only problem is that you have to move to their Webworld to conduct the video conference. One of the limitations of video conferencing is that it is not easy to interconnect different systems. Which means you cannot easily dial out to clients’ video conferencing system from yours and have a conference. Therefore, if your travel is mostly for client meetings, then video conferencing may not be a cheaper alternative.
And while on the topic of travel and stay, what about sharing rooms?
Sabsebolo is a recently launched free conference service by Yogesh Pate and Sabeer Bhatia. It enables as many as 10 parties to listen to or participate in a conference call you make – for free. Besides this free service, they also provide paid plans and business plans and fax to email service. Binesh Kutty at the DARE blogs
12. Reduce printing and posting costs
If your business involves printing and posting a large volume of bills every month, consider emailing them as PDF. This saves you printer costs, paper costs, electricity and postage costs, not to speak of manpower and time costs. Many banks and telecom service providers today offer both printed and electronic versions of their bills to customers; but may small businesses and single entrepreneur initiatives have gone a step further and completely done away with paper bills. No reason why you should not join them. And while at it, add a line at the bottom to each PDF bill to show your concern for the environment with a message like: “Save the environment; please do not print multiple copies of this bill unless it is absolutely essential .”
On the subject of printing, have you considered reducing the quality of paper that you use for your marketing literature and for bill printing? A small reduction in the quality of paper used – a reduction in grammage or a shift from art paper to normal paper will result in substantial savings while having no effect on your business’ image.
Another point we have already touched upon is whether you really have to use that costly courier? Can a cheaper local courier work out? If you have to absolutely deliver printed material, what about sending electronic documents to your local offices for printing and local delivery instead of printing and couriering from a central office? Savings in courier costs could be significant.
What about documents for internal customers: your employees? Why not save some paper there by putting them up on an intranet? Don’t have one? You can create one for free on Ning. And here is something that most organizations do anyway – recycle ink cartridges.
13. Implement open source software
There is a saying that when times get tough, open source gets going. Why? The logic is simple: IT budgets are amongst the first to get cut and at the same time the pressure from software companies (who have their own huge targets) to license software goes up. The way out? Open source.
How usable is open source? A majority of the Websites in the world run on Apache, an open source software. Tomcat and Jboss are widely used application servers. The DARE Website is implemented on Joomla, another open source software. The emailing system for the Website runs on yet another open source software – PHP List. We use another open source software LimeSurvey . This article is written using OpenOffice.org, an open source office suite. Some of my article concepts are developed using Freemind and open source mind mapper. Some of my basic graphics work is done using Paint.Net. We run our network asset management on SpiceWorks, and use many other open source tools for network monitoring and management.
If you are considering this approach, then there are a few things that you must keep in mind. Open source does not necessarily mean free. There are implementation and maintenance costs that you will have to pay. And many open source software have paid versions that are more feature rich or offer assured support. The biggest cost differential comes in the per-seat licensing fee. Most paid software operate on such a basis. Most open source application software do not either charge a license fee or charge a low fee. That is where your savings actually come from.
14. Reduce telephone costs
Communication costs are never insignificant for any business. If you have a lot of international calling to do, have you checked out Skype phones or services like World Phone that give you cheaper international telephony?
For calls within the country, did you know that you get better rates with closed user groups?
Soruce: http://www.dare.co.in/strategy/business-essentials/25-tips-to-manage-through-the-slowdown/Page-2.htm
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