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Are you looking for ways to save your small business money? We recommend starting with your office, cut out it’s hidden expenses to boost your profit. To find your hidden costs, perform an office automation audit and then look for constructive solutions to reduce those costs. Follow these steps to identify and ultimately reduce your office costs.
Document Your Employees Day-to-Day Tasks
Your employees are your best source to understanding how your office operates, they will know more about it’s functionality and needs than anyone. Ask them to document how they complete their day-to-day tasks, then review the documentation with your staff to identify problems and excesses within the office. Now you can start your search for solutions.
Manage Printing Costs
The cost of purchasing paper and ink adds up quickly, there are a number of solutions to help manage these costs. First ,you should implement an office wide paperless policy. Only important documents should be printed, if you do go with this route, monitor your employees use of the printer to ensure that they are properly following the policy. You should also look at using an online document management system. Document handling systems house, organize and archive your files electronically, reducing the need to print documents for filing purposes.
Invest in a Quality Printer
If you find that your small business has been outsourcing a lot of printing jobs, consider purchasing a high quality printer. This is a great solution for businesses who don’t have heavy marketing needs but still require market ready documents.
Consolidate Your Office Equipment
Take advantage of office equipment and technologies that are multifunctional. Consider getting rid of your fax machine; a fax line frequently incurs long distance charges and costs money in ink and printing. Using scan to email eliminates the need of a fax machine and a fax line. A multifunction printer is a smart way to consolidate your printing, scanning and photocopying needs. However, make sure that you invest in a multifunction printer that allows for scan to email. You should also monitor the use of the phone line, instead of making long distance calls use video calls over your internet through free services like SKYPE.
Other helpful ideas: have a power audit done to find ways to reduce your energy bills, look online for business templates to reduce graphic costs and recycle your paper and ink cartridges.
Working with an office automation expert will help you to identify your small businesses hidden costs. If you are a Hamilton or Niagara business and are interested in learning more, request a free office automation assessment from Brock Office Automation today.
