It
is very easy to spend money and commit additional costs for a startup. On the
other hand it is very difficult to cut back these costs.
One
cost that I found running out of control was that of paper used in printers and
photocopiers. I realized that we were using using several reams of paper every
day and this had started to become a very expensive proposition for the
company.
Employees
would print anything they wanted on one of several printers spread throughout
the office floor and I would often find hundreds of sheets of waste paper lying
next to the printer in the morning. Someone would had given a print command and
then not bothered to pick up the printout. All these printouts were single side
printing on each sheet of paper leading to a doubling of the costs, more so
when the paper was wasted in unnecessary printouts.
I
found the same practice at the photocopying machine where a lot of documents
would be sent for copying and then extra copies would be left lying around the
photocopier. I also found employees misusing the photocopier by copying
personal books which ran into several hundred pages.
Other
than the cost of the paper and the wastage of the paper being environmentally
unacceptable, this was also a serious data security lapse both near the
printers as well as at the photocopier.
We
implemented the following steps immediately to bring our costs under control
· We earmarked each
printer to a group of departments to identify who was wasting paper. Each
computer print option was configured to select only the nominated printer and
all other options were removed.
·
We configured a
default option on every computer to print on both sides of the paper. Now an
individual had to select “single side print” if he wanted to send an official
letter.
·
We started using
refilled printer cartridges for all printers.
· We used the existing
“code” feature in the photocopier and assigned a code to each department. Each
department had to enter this code before they could operate the machine and
records were available for a scrutiny if necessary.
These
were simple but very effective steps to reduce the cost of paper. We saved a
lot of money by reducing the wasted paper and we brought in much greater
accountability. We took these steps using features that were available in all
the software and while achieving cost cuts, we were being environmentally
friendly as well.
Another
area of paper wastage was at the stores. As a retail company, we would print
our customer bills on three inch strips of paper. I found that our standard customer
bill was about 15 inches long. A lot of paper was being wasted simply because
we were leaving too much space between every line of each bill. These empty
spaces were left partly to make the bill “look nicer” and partly because no one
had bothered to think of the cost. I did a quick calculation and found that we
were using over 5000 kilometers of paper rolls in one year.
We
re-engineered the bill, cut out all the blank lines and the unnecessary lined
and reduced the length of each bill to 6 inches from the earlier 15 inches
(without removing any data that was required to be printed on the bill). We saved
over 3000 miles of paper rolls every year.
Cost
control in a startup is critical for its success. A culture of cost control, if
implemented properly from the beginning will go a long way in building
efficiencies in most companies.
The
author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling
books, The Corner Office and The Buck Stops Here. Twitter: @gargashutosh
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