As a business owner, money is always on your mind. With every decision you make or new client you bring on, you are constantly thinking about the bottom line. You not only need to keep your company profitable, but you also have a duty to ensure your hard-working employees get paid on time.
Running a company is undoubtedly expensive. You have to pay for your premises, staff, technology, insurance, and transport costs. If you’re not careful with your budget when crunching the numbers, you risk your business going into the red and causing huge problems for everyone involved.
Fortunately, there are so many ways you can save money for your company. By being more vigilant with your finances in certain areas and finding cheaper alternatives, you can widen your profit margin and set yourself up for growth and prosperity in the new year. To get you started, here are four areas in which you can save your business a great deal of money.
Premises
One of your biggest expenses when running a company is paying for your office space. You might rent out your premises or you might own it outright. Either way, there are huge costs involved. If you want to make huge savings, it is worth looking at whether your office is suitable for the size and nature of your business. Maybe the amount of space is too large for the tight knit team you run, or maybe the rent is extortionately high for the area. It is worth looking at other options and running the numbers to see if it is more cost-effective to relocate your business premises. Although this might cause a bit of temporary disruption, it may ultimately save your company a huge sum.
Overheads
The cost of heating, watering, and lighting a large office is surprisingly high. Of course you can reduce your utility bill by switching lights off and being conservative about the amount of energy you consume. But this will only go so far. The best thing you can do is to reduce your overheads by reducing the quantity of staff in the office. Implementing a flexible working policy where your employees can work from home some or all of the time will make a significant difference to your finances over time.
Technology
Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies are increasingly common in business nowadays. Rather than providing your staff with company laptops and phones, you could simply ask them to use their own. You may need to provide them with an allowance for doing so, as well as enforcing strict data protection rules, but ultimately this will prevent you spending huge amounts on expensive devices.
Marketing
Traditional marketing such as online adverts and printed materials costs a lot of money, but marketing doesn’t have to cost a penny. If you can learn to be adept at organic marketing, such as social media, search engine optimization, and content creation, you can generate a huge following for almost no money at all. Your target audience will be drawn in through quality, valuable content rather than paid advertising, and they will be more engaged and likely to purchase from you as a result.