In any company, there is bound to be wastage in your procurement process. It’s important for procurement officers and managers to find out where these expenses are and kill them. In our modern age where everything can be tracked with technology, its getting easier for companies to identify points of wastage in their company and eliminate them. The concept of the Size Zero Enterprise has arisen:

 

Size Zero means operating at maximum efficiency by focusing on where value is
created, and being ruthless in removing waste. Doing more, with less if you like.

Zero Inefficiency

no time!

Basically, being a Size Zero Company requires you to reduce as much expenses as possible but still maintaining productivity and revenue, using tools such as automation or technology. With the multitude of companies specialising in taking on outsourced projects, sometimes it might be a better idea to utilise them.

For example, if you require a campaign done that need the help of 50 marketing employees, it would make more sense to outsource the project to an ad agency to do at a lower cost. Given their expertise, they could possibly even do a better job than in-house employees!

At the heart of it, being a Size Zero company is about working smarter – not harder.

Zero Stock

Analyse, analyse, analyse. Go through all your processes and make sure you only buy things when you need them! This could apply to things like office supplies or consumables, really scrutinise them and quash the unnecessary. For example, in a whitepaper posted by Xerox in 2011, they realised that print spending was costing them 1-3% of their total revenue. After identifying this problem, they outsourced their printing to a managed printing service provider and immediately saw a 20-30% cost reduction. Who would have thought that ink and paper could cost so much?

While your company is likely not a tech juggernaut like Xerox is, it could pay to take a look at the smaller things such as printing, you’ll never know where you could save.

 Zero Wasted Time

Now we’re talking about less tangible things. Time isn’t as easy to save as money, but isn’t it the most valuable thing that we own?

The biggest culprit of wasted time is useless meetings. We’ve all been there. Meetings that have no clear objective, no clear goal and no agenda whatsoever. Nobody knows why they’re there but nobody speaks up either. Why?

Get it together, Dave.

And it’s not just the time spent in the meetings that is time wasted. Sometimes the act of organising and planning the meeting could take even longer than the meeting itself!

Ask yourself: Could we communicate the contents of the proposed meeting in an email? Is it possible to reduce the time taken in the meeting itself? If you truly need to have a meeting, make sure that only key personnel are involved.

Time may be the most valuable asset that the company has and its important to protect it as much as possible. In our tech-enabled society, there are many ways to disseminate information other than antiquated meetings, get creative!

Procurement? No Problem.

Attempting to lean out your costs and reduce wastage isn’t a quick and easy affair. Give yourself sometime to find out the various areas that may have cost reduction potential and work on them one by one. Things take time, give yourself some!

(Pssst, if you’re looking to start somewhere, why not check out Eezee for all your hardware and industrial supplies procurement needs? Go on, take a look, its free!)