Small to medium enterprises will often need to mold themselves to the current market to retain existing clients and land new ones. This balancing act can be particularly difficult considering the rate at which technology is scaling and the growing demand overall in enterprise markets.
It is vital to keep your business open to facilitate new business without inundating your operations to your employees’ current breaking point and operational capacity. In such situations keeping up with the competition will mean having the backing capital to scale your operation to meet or ideally surpass your competitors.
However, to do this, you first need capital to invest. Saving money is vital for any enterprise. Today, we’ll cover a variety of ideas you can implement to save capital for reinvestment in your business.
Save Money On Your Water Bills
This, initially, may not be your first stop for saving money for your SME, but every drop in the proverbial ocean counts. With water utility companies consistently updating their prices to reflect fluctuations in water demand, it is wise to keep a watchful eye on how much you are getting charged.
It is not uncommon for unscrupulous water companies to add surcharges to their billing plans. It is also not uncommon for tariffs to be overhauled in favor of the water companies themselves, especially with the recent privatization of the water sector.
But you may be thinking, my enterprise doesn’t use much water. Why would I need to think about this? Well, outside of SMEs that use water coolant systems, you may think so. However, if you run a physical office, there are still ways you can save.
Your employees will still use the bathroom and kitchen facilities, so installing toilet tanks and water-saving faucets to your taps may save pennies in the short term. However, overall? Overall, you can save quite a chunk of money monthly and annually.
You can always take a look at switching too. Fantastic business water companies such as Castle Water handle this process to get you the best rates going. In the long run, this can chip away at your monthly costs to give you a bit more of a cash buffer for each month, a portion of which can be saved.
Re-Assess Your Digital Subscriptions
As a small to medium enterprise, digital subscriptions may prove to be the backbone of your services. Therefore, it is paramount that you assess if money can be saved for the subscriptions you currently have and cancel unnecessary ones.
Taking a monthly assessment of your enterprise’s software packages is always a good idea. It is a great way to identify areas where you can reduce subscription costs to save.
It is always good to keep your pulse on the changing landscape of software monopolies to identify any new kids on the block trying to disrupt the current software meta. Such software companies can often offer comparable or even better software than existing monopolized software packages for cheaper.
For example, there’s an abundance of new word processors flooding the software market lately. There are even some fantastic word processors that are free and offer the same functionality that traditional software packages like Microsoft Word offer. Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice are two such examples.
Consider On-Site Storage Solutions
Cloud storage solutions are always a common area where SMEs overspend. The opinion of having too much, rather than too little, is always the justification for this overspending. Cloud storage companies will also often offer incentives to provide SMEs with more storage for less to get them on the hook and then hike prices.
Frequently SMEs will gravitate towards cloud storage solutions over hardware storage solutions for ease of access and flexible nomad-style working lives for their employees.
However, with the correct on-site storage solutions and an appropriate server set-up, this can all be handled in-house while keeping flexible working as an option. This will save you on monthly subscription fees and give you more autonomy over your data, your storage, and its security.
It also means that expanding storage capacity is as easy as installing new hard drive disks or solid-state drives.
Move To Fully Remote Working
If you believe that cloud storage is better for your enterprise in the long run, why stop there? If you still have a physical office space and your services can be fulfilled exclusively online, then cutting the office out of the equation entirely can be very beneficial financially.
If your team’s synergy and dynamic will allow it, then ditching the office for a fully remote working style may be a way in which you could save thousands on rent every month.
And if COVID-19 has shown us anything, it’s that remote working can be a valid and very effective method of running a business.
Utilize Free Tools
To save money, you can also make more out of free tools. For instance, if you want to check how custom merchandise looks on products before you commit resources, a free tshirt mockup generator lets you do just that.
Or take tools like Canva or Buffer for creating designs and managing social media. Sure, they might be missing some premium features, but they still get the job done.
Conclusion
Keeping on top of your SME expenses is important but being able to identify where you can save funds is just as – if not more – important.
Saving even a small amount on a monthly basis can add up to saving a decent amount for re-investment over the course of the year. Don’t get discouraged if you can only save a small sum. A small sum is better than nothing at all.
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