Reduce Office Expenses with these 4 great solutions

Office expenses can quickly spiral out of control for many businesses and become difficult to keep tabs on. Whether it’s print or supply costs, employee travel expenses or document management, here are four great ways to reduce office expenses.

Managed Print Services

Printing is one of those areas where businesses can easily rack up a bill without realising it. That also makes it a great area to reduce office expenses. If you find that your business is spending an inordinate amount on print with nothing to show for it, then Managed Print Services (or MPS) is one to look into.

In short, Managed Print Services is an integrated service designed to optimise and manage a company’s document and print output.

Whether you want to cut your overall print volume, reduce your use of coloured ink or limit print by type of user, Managed Print Services can do it. And if set up correctly, can provide an impressive range of solutions, making it much more than simply a print and copying solution.

An MPS system is remotely monitored and managed by your supplier who will keep an eye on the machine’s operating status and ink & toner levels, providing maintenance and restocking the system as and when needed.

And the cost savings? Well, you can expect to save up to 30% on your print costs.

Find out more about Managed Print Services.

Consolidate business suppliers

Typically, your office expenses are considered an ‘indirect’ spend – meaning that they have no direct impact on your core business activities. While these indirect costs make up around 20% of a business’s costs, they can represent over 80% of the supply chain. This means increased management time, resource allocation and of course, costs.

What if all of your office supplies came from a single source and you had just one invoice per month? By consolidating your suppliers, you can cut out these costs, reduce the number of deliveries to your office and save yourself a whole lot of time and effort.

Services such as Vantage allow you to identify where those bloated costs are and pin point exactly how your supply chain can be streamlined to a single source.

Leverage technology

Effectively leveraging technology is fast becoming a priority for businesses. And it’s easy to see why. The sheer number of cloud software platforms available for businesses nowadays is mind boggling, with applications devoted to nearly all areas of a business, from file sharing and collaboration to payroll management and recruitment. Finding the right solution for your business can ensure greater efficiency, improved transparency, better data security and ensure better cross platform co-working (i.e. if some in your business use Macs and others use Windows.).

Using a cloud service will also allow you to reduce office expenses in a few ways. Firstly, by moving your work to the cloud, you will offset much of your IT costs such as backing up and managing internal servers. The security of cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications has improved drastically and there are now considered to be just as secure as using a client-side solution.

Another way leveraging the cloud can help is by reducing your business’s travel costs – especially important if you have a number of offices or remote workers. The expense associated with business travel is often overlooked and considered a business requirement – but does it need to be? Granted, some trips simply can’t be avoided, but many can. By using video conferencing, VoIP and collaborative project management tools, most business can be conducted without the need to travel.

Find out about our technology service.

Go Paperless

Hold on, why would an office supplier be telling businesses to go paperless? Well, the benefits of electronic Document Management solutions for businesses are significant. The improvements in efficiency and management has been shown to improve operations and encourage growth. With quicker turnaround times, ease of use and tighter controls, businesses have more time and resources to expand and grow.

Electronic management systems such as Hybrid Mail, can allow businesses to save over 30% on costs by cutting down on invoices, statements and other traditional mail items. Not to mention the reduction in waste generated by physical document solutions.