How a Technology Assessment Can Help Offset Unexpected, Rising Costs

Even though inflation rates were at 5% in March 2023—lower compared to last year—it is still uncomfortably high.  The Federal Reserve has also raised interest rates over the past year, signaling that more increases are expected. SMBs are feeling the crushing inflationary pressure as well as reeling from a tight labor market and unpredictable fuel costs. 

For most people, disposable income is shrinking. I find myself in the dairy aisle considering the cost of organic vs. regular milk and making the unfathomable decision to cut my Netflix subscription, but what about business owners? The weight on their shoulders is getting heavier and P&L sheets are taking a beating. Tough business decisions are being made like raising the cost of goods or contemplating layoffs.

Times like these call for creative measures. Readjusting departmental budgets is a start, but if you take a closer look around you, there could be wasted money hidden in plain sight. You might be wondering, where to begin? My recommendation is a workplace technology assessment. It can provide numerous benefits, but right now the focus is to recover wasted expenses.

Here are five ways a technology assessment can help businesses offset these financial constraints. 

Reduce travel expenditures.

How much does your company spend on airfare, lodging and daily allowances? It might be more than you think now that prices have skyrocketed. Did you know telecommuting can reduce travel costs by 30% and save $11,000 per employee per year? Identifying the right video conferencing solutions for your workplace can preserve face-to-face meetings, no matter where either party is located. The ROI in both time and money can be recovered faster than going through a dreadful TSA checkpoint.

Process paperwork faster.

It takes 45% of companies one week to get a contract signed. Bottlenecks like these can delay payments and impact customer satisfaction. Not to mention that 21% of staff productivity can be lost to processing documents. Pinpointing manual paperwork practices and converting them into digital, automated workflows can speed up shipping orders, POs, employee onboarding and more, so you can run lean and mean.

Bring printing in house.

The last time you outsourced a print job, did you order extra brochures that have gone stale sitting pretty on a shelf? It hurts to throw them out because you paid a lot for them. For some companies bringing printing in house has saved them money overtime by printing on demand at a cheaper price per unit. It might be worth your while to weigh the pros and cons of insourcing versus outsourcing for future print orders.

Reveal your total cost of printing.

What do you currently spend on printing? Here’s the kicker, that calculation includes the cost-effectiveness of your printing devices, company-wide print usage, supplies and service maintenance. Not knowing this can hurt you.

An assessment can reveal your total cost followed by suggestions to minimize your spend and curb wasteful printing (sorry Sally, no more color flyers for your side hustle on the company’s dime). In addition to making cost-savings adjustments to your print environment, Managed Print Services is something to consider. Organizations that have outsourced the management of their printers have cut 30% of their total cost of printing. That’s pretty impressive.

Identify cybersecurity threats.

You cannot afford to skip this one. Small and mid-sized businesses experienced an average of three cybersecurity incidents annually and any one incident had a 23% chance of putting them out of business. An assessment can pull back the curtain to find vulnerabilities on your network and help you make informed decisions to protect your business and keep your very important data away from cybercriminals.

Before diving headfirst into an assessment, make sure to consult with a trusted and knowledgeable office technology provider who will keep your organization’s cost-saving goals in mind. You might be surprised with what they uncover through their highly trained lens. Any amount of money or time recovered will certainly help ease the burden of these unprecedented costs.