Now I’m not a hard-core environmentalist by any definition, but it seems to me that a solution to our current troublesome economic conditions mirrors the thinking environmental movement a little. That is, if we all do our part, we can turn this thing around.

Of course there are also some companies posting record setting profits these days, but they seem to be the exception – albeit enormous exceptions – rather than the rule.

What is one of the first things that happen when economic conditions worsen? Companies start cutting costs, right? Often right away. There are freezes on spending, freezes on hiring. Even “right-sizing”.

Those are pretty drastic measures, and I’d venture to say that there other things that might be worth trying first.

Consolidate Duplication

I’ll give you a sample scenario. Let’s say that you have maybe eight locations in your organization – more than a few, but not too many. Every week, each of your locations requires some fancy report that consolidates a bunch of data related to the activity at that specific location. Maybe it’s manufacturing data, maybe it’s retail sales data, perhaps it’s purely financial performance data. It doesn’t matter; this is more about the process.

You have an analyst at each location who cobbles this report together using a number of data sources, because the most useful tools often aren’t the straightforward, single topic reports that you can get out of your accounting system.

Now even within a single organization, the staff who perform similar roles often have varying levels in their abilities, so not all of them can get the same task accomplished in the same time allotment. Let’s suppose that some can get this particular job done in three hours, others may take as much as seven or more – much more. Some of them even seem to often need the assistance of others to get it done. Overtime work might be involved. Does this sound at all familiar?

For argument’s sake, we’ll say that they all get their individual tasks accomplished in an average of four hours each.

So you’ve got eight people, each working four hours a week on a task. That’s 32 hours. Now let’s say that they’re reasonably skilled, so for this example let’s say that they’re paid $20 an hour, just because it makes the calculations easier. This one task is costing the organization $640 a week, or $33,280 a year. Plus benefits too, in all likelihood.

What if you could get it down to a couple of hours a week, done by one person (who had access to all of the essential information) instead of eight? What would happen?

There are at least a couple of possibilities:

1) You’ll save some money. Given the scenario above, $31,200 a year, or a drop of over 93% from the initial cost. This goes straight to your earnings, or you use it reinvest in and better you business and/or your people.2) Since you still need those local staff for everything else they do, let’s say that you don’t make any changes to your staffing. But now you’ve freed up an average of 10% of each staff member’s time each and every week. Time that they can spend focusing on other ways of improving your organization. Remember this is an average, so for some of our sample group that number might 20% or higher.This scenario improves even more if you organization earns its revenue based on billable time, and the time those analysts spend on your overhead task can be diverted to billable hours. Now you’ve cut costs, improved productivity, improved the timeliness (and probably the accuracy) of the information distributed and increased revenues all in one fell step.

And if they’re not billable, they can still devote their time to doing their best to build the tools you can use to better manage your organization.

The organization may well have some upfront costs associated with a similar change. You might need some software and training, and you may need to invest the time to build the final solution you need. Take a few minutes and calculate your return on investment. If your particular situation is anything like the example described above, I’d venture to say that the benefits far outweigh the costs.

And that’s just in the first year.

Of course, you may not this sample situation wherein you’ve got a bunch of people doing a repetitive task. Maybe they’re all doing their own thing. But is each of them as efficient as they could be? Could they contribute more if they had better tools, and knew how to use them well?

Lead by Example

You hear that the economy is bad, and that organizations can’t afford to invest in software and training.

I say that you can’t afford to not invest in software and training. We’re talking about pretty simple steps that organizations of any size can undertake to help improve their positions. If your organization isn’t as large as the group roughly outlined in the sample above, you can still create efficiencies and make more precious time available for other tasks that will create long-term benefits.

I’m not really so naïve as to believe that relatively minor savings such as that outlined in my sample will alleviate all your problems when facing large losses, but I do know that when you implement efficient practices and are able to implement good, solid management tools like consistent reliable reporting and dashboards, you’ll be in a better position to act and react as necessary to run the business effectively, and likely profitably.

When will you be pro-active and lead your organization with the steps necessary to really excel with Monarch?