10 Simple Ways to Cut Business Costs

In today's economy, small businesses are looking for ways to cut costs across all aspects of their operations. While large-scale company overhauls may not be necessary, small, common-sense steps can improve the bottom line. One way to achieve this is through the use of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Jacktrade is an example of an ERP solution that can help small businesses cut costs across all areas of their operations, including finance, operations, marketing, and sales. 

ERP systems allow businesses to streamline their operations by managing their finances, inventory, production, and sales in one integrated system. With an ERP system like Jacktrade, small businesses can improve their efficiency, reduce errors, and save money.

Cutting costs in business is vital to maintain financial stability, particularly during a crisis. However, knowing where to start can be challenging. Here are ten proven ways to cut business costs and save money in the long run.

1. Finance Management: Jacktrade allows businesses to track and manage their finances in real-time. It helps businesses to reduce accounting errors, generate accurate financial reports, and forecast future cash flows. The system also integrates with various financial institutions, making it easier for businesses to manage their accounts and payments.
   
   
2. Operations Management: Jacktrade provides businesses with tools to streamline their production processes. It allows businesses to track inventory levels, optimize production processes, and reduce waste. Jacktrade also provides businesses with real-time data on their supply chain, allowing them to make informed decisions and reduce costs. 
   
   
3. Modernize marketing efforts: Jacktrade helps businesses to automate their marketing and sales processes. It provides businesses with real-time data on customer behavior and helps them to target the right customers with the right products. By automating these processes, businesses can reduce their marketing and sales costs and increase their revenue. Building a customer email list, implementing a referral program, networking more, advertising less, and increasing social media use are cheaper alternatives to traditional marketing. These strategies can save businesses up to 62% on marketing costs annually.
   
   
4. Reduce supply expenses: Comparing prices is an excellent way to save on office supplies. Sourcing office supplies from large discount suppliers like Amazon Business, Walmart, and Uline can often beat traditional office supply prices. This can save businesses up to 70% on supplies annually.
   
   
5. Cut production costs: Selling leftover cardboard, paper, and metal can add an extra stream of income. Using waste to create another product can also provide savings. Centralizing or consolidating the space necessary for production can save up to 20% of production costs.
   
   
6. Cut costs on financial accounts: Reviewing insurance policies and consolidating accounts can save up to 15% on costs. Taking on unnecessary debt can affect a company's rating, interest rates, and ability to borrow in the future.
   
   
7. Use efficient time strategies: Minimizing distractions, tracking employee time usage, setting expectations, adhering to schedules, and holding meetings can save up to 20% on payroll costs. With Jacktrade technology, managers can better allocate their resources, including employees, to maximize efficiency and productivity. By understanding the skills of each employee, managers can assign tasks and projects that align with their abilities and interests.
   
   
8. Cut costs with virtual technology: Utilizing virtual meetings, virtual offices, and virtual document sharing can save up to 30% on costs related to managing your daily sharing experience. Jacktrade can facilitate collaboration and communication between employees, teams, and departments. By integrating project management tools and communication platforms, employees can work together more effectively and share knowledge and expertise.
   
   
9. Narrow your focus: Limiting the types of services offered and projects accepted can increase productivity and save up to 40% on costs.
   
   
10. Maximize your employees' skills: Employing people in the right positions, using expert employees for specific tasks, and exchanging tasks can increase efficiency and save up to 10% on payroll costs. By leveraging the capabilities of ERP systems, businesses can create a culture of continuous learning and development, retain top talent, and drive innovation and growth.

Analyzing The Investment Of A Unified CRM

Unified CRM provides a robust set of features and integration capabilities out of the box that is otherwise hard to build, develop or implement. It already unifies different systems and business workflows making it super effective to get started, train your team, and become powerful within the first few days of implementation. The way to view a unified CRM is that it truly unites your team, centralizes your daily tasks across your business functions, and makes your return on investment more justifiable.

If you have been considering a CRM investment but are not sure if it is worth the money, here are a few questions you need to ask:

What is a CRM? How does it work?

How do I calculate whether or not a CRM is worth the investment?

If it is a good investment, how do I make it work for my business?

All good questions – time to get started!

 

1. Simplifies the most complicated - A single view of your entire business for better control and data dependencies. Everyone is on one system instead of many independent systems. Most CRMs in the market are very complicated to set up or get started with. A unified CRM provides the following benefits. And, if you are not receiving these benefits as part of your integration - you should rethink your investment with your solution providers.
   
   
2. Sets up And integrates Quickly - A CRM without integration capabilities is not useful. Every CRM should be able to talk to external as well as internal systems owned by the company. At a minimum, a good CRM offers Open API access and gets inbound data from email or other web sources.
   • Out of Box Experience
   • Configurable Options
   • Multi-user setup with Roles and Permissions
   • Access From Anywhere
   • Open APIs
     
     
3. Data Accessibility And Reliability - A CRM is useful if and only if it provides us with the facility to access data instantly. It helps us to store all the customer data which can be accessed anytime. This not only helps us to save time but also increases the speed of the work and also becomes easy for the employees, hence more work can be done in less time. Along with the accessibility, the data should be reliable. CRM collects data from various sources. Everyone works with the same data, exponentially increasing data integrity. When new data is entered into the system it is updated in real time for all to see.
   
   
4. Alignment between different organizations - Unified CRM allows you to increase the flexibility, scalability, and security of your business. Nowadays, the most effective strategy is to adopt unified marketing, sales, and service platform. With a keen focus on CRM integration, you can use an all-in-one dashboard to unite your teams and get the most out of it. These features also lend accountability to each respective team, forcing them to collaborate in new and innovative ways. This will help you to:
   • Generate and nurture leads
   • Track sales activity
   • Automate sales, marketing, and customer service tasks
   • Break down silos to foster stronger ties within your organization
   • Forge lasting relationships with customers
   • Standardize your sales process and improve your results.
     
     
5. Faster, Quicker, Simpler Customer Communication - Businesses of all sizes are increasingly opting for unified CRM systems because they let users complete so many tasks in one, unified system. This means not having to flip back and forth between multiple screens to access various systems and retrieve the data you need from each, thus slowing you down. It also means not having to purchase separate systems for various functions. For example, a unified CRM eliminates the need to purchase a separate marketing automation platform because you already have one built into your CRM. You interact with one customer support team who gets to know you and your use case better than reps from four different vendors would.
   
   
6. Automation Is Much Easier - Every customer goes through several stages before buying a product or service. Without a CRM, a salesperson has to manually analyze which stage an opportunity lies in. A CRM on the other hand, will automatically define a plan of action and aid the salesperson by notifying the exact steps he can take to close the deal.
   
   
7. Easy On The Wallet - The advantages of Unified CRM are its relative affordability, the ability to customize platforms to individual use cases, and the ability to subscribe to solutions that more narrowly fit your needs. Companies can upgrade whenever they like, and depending on the contract, sometimes downgrade with little penalty. Many CRMs are free of cost or give you a trial for a particular period. You can customize your CRM according to your needs. It’s simple and affordable to get started with a unified CRM:
   1. Offers highly competitive and scalable pricing, per user, and you can add or remove user accounts at any time.
   2. Packages come with unlimited contacts, no data caps, and free support—benefits that some of the most expensive enterprise CRMs don’t offer.
   3. The single price point allows you to start using it today without massive capital investment and effort.

 

 

 

Investing In A Better CRM

 

Investing In A Better CRM - A recent survey revealed that for companies that use a CRM, the average return on their technology investment is $8.71 for each dollar spent. (Source). It’s nearly impossible to remain competitive today without leveraging a CRM solution to automate processes, improve alignment between teams, streamline data storage, and form better customer relationships. Companies that use CRM solutions to the fullest of their capabilities will be the ones that survive in the future. Those that don’t will fade into obscurity.

Before you invest in a CRM platform, you need to determine your goals, that is what it is that you wish to achieve and how using a CRM system will help you. You won’t be using CRM to its full potential if you only use it to store your customer’s data and do nothing with the information afterward. You have to determine how you want to use the data you’ll collect to improve your business. Businesses that leverage CRM software see sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. (source)

Because high-quality CRMs provide sales enablement tools, process automation, CRM reporting, access to loads of personal customer data, and built-in project management capabilities. All of this allows sales reps to easily form relationships with prospects and engage them in a personalized way that is always relevant to the individual prospect.

CRM can be used by the company to align its strategy. The strategy is based on how to develop, establish and increase the relationship with the customer from a profitability perspective. Businesses will continue to increase investments in CRM solutions. Fueled not only by improving results but also by a need to keep up with their competitors and create a great customer experience. This is all expected to turn the CRM sector into an $80 billion industry by the end of 2025.