Innovations in Efficiency

One of the major challenges facing a number of my clients and apparently many UK businesses is driving efficiency in order to maintain margins.

Actually, businesses seem to have 3 strategic priorities right now:

1. Winning work
2. Efficiency
3. Maintaining the culture, spirit and disciplines

In this blog I want to focus on innovations in efficiency. Most businesses have taken the lower hanging fruit by reducing overheads and external costs via their supply chains. The challenge for many now is to review their own internal processes and practices to cut costs by becoming more efficient.

Some of the innovations I have been working on with a number of clients that have produced some significant gains have been:

E-Procurement
Electronic procurement reduces the cost of purchases on average between 20-30% above normal traditional buying methods.

System Slippage
Getting teams to review existing systems in high value areas to validate systems and reinstall where they have slipped. This has produced multi-million pound savings in a number of companies.

Value Gap Analysis
Finding out what customers really value in your offer and reduce costs in areas not valued. This process not only reduces costs it also enhances win rates when bidding for new work.

Zero Based Budgeting
By focusing on the essential costs bottom up i.e. what must we do? This reduces overhead costs significantly.

So the insight for me has been it is possible to be entrepreneurial and innovative even in difficult times when reducing costs.

Happy to forward toolkits on any of these process and share my experiences of applying them in practice.

It's good to talk.