5 Common Areas of Waste in Businesses

1. Look at your allocation of resources.  Are you doing something internally that is better to be outsourced? Time is valuable, and instead of spending it on tedious tasks that you aren’t doing well, your time could be better spent in business development and building the business.
2. At the same time, are you outsourcing something that could easily be done in-house to save money such as marketing or advertising?
3. Get more disciplined about the cost basis for your business. It takes less time to analyze and optimize the cost basis for a company than to bring in new business.
4. If you take the time to build a budget, it is important to take the time to understand the variances on a monthly basis. The end result should be a document that reflects your company culture and can be changed as needed to better fit your changing business.
5. Look at employee spending patterns and align with new or changed policies going forward. Check out our tips for creating an effective employee expense policy. 

Take charge of your business expenses and take home more. Don’t underestimate the positive effects identifying areas of waste in your business can have. Pay more attention to the data on your company’s spending and take a close look at your spending habits — it will pay off.