Sam Lazarus of Best Corporation, Inc., who is also a ServiceMaster franchisee, in Wichita, Kansas, has seen significant savings in his business by adopting various cost cutting measures. Let’s hear it from Sam himself –
“With the economic downturn,as a small business owner I have systematically focused on cost cutting. This year, I once again began evaluating every vendor that we have – from phones (cell and landlines) to insurance providers, from utilities to property taxes,” says Sam.
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Here is a partial list of vendors Sam looked at and how he saved money –
1. Cell phones: We cut off on a spare line. Analyzed all lines based on 12 month usage and dropped a few, and kept a few at the same plans. This saved the company about 12 percent per month.
2. Land Phone Lines: We are currently in the midst of analysis and will make changes in a few weeks once we analyze it better.
3. Trash Hauling: We initially invited bids and presented it to the vendor that was providing the service. Since they were not able to match our requirement, the contract was terminated and we signed a new one. With this, we have seen a saving of more than 60 percent. We also went from two hauls a week to one haul and, for a larger dumpster.
4.For our fleet of 20 plus vehicles, we invested in purchasing equipment to provide additional in-house maintenance of air intake systems and fuel line systems and cleaning them to get better mileage on our vehicles. We are certainly getting better mileage.
5. Payroll processing: We used to pay our employees weekly; now we are paying them every other week. This resulted in the reduction of payroll production cost by 55 percent.
6. Insurance: We had a commercial insurance broker to look at all possible options. Our vehicle insurance increased a bit (expected due to losses in the previous year); however, our General Liability and other policies dropped 50 percent.
7. Buildings: Installed roof domed natural lighting to cut back on day time utilities. We will not see a difference until spring with longer days and shorter nights. We are slowly changing other light fixtures as well. We are working on installing insulated garage doors etc., on other buildings we own.
Owned by the Lazarus brothers, David and Sam, ServiceMaster by Best Corporation, Inc. in Wichita is Kansas’ first and only Green Seal Certified commercial &residential cleaning and Restoration Contractor offering services such as Air duct cleaning; carpet, rug and upholstery cleaning, commercial custodial/janitorial cleaning and green cleaning, fire damage restoration, water damage restoration, mold remediation, snow removal, sewer damage and Bio/blood clean-up.
We hope you will be able to adopt some of the above mentioned tips to save money.
If you are a Small Business Owner, who has made significant savings by adopting various cost cutting measures, feel free to share your experience with us.
We welcome your valuable comments and feedback.
Do you know a friend who can provide better tips on saving money? Mention them in the comment below. Ex: @Mary has great tips on low budget advertising.
