One spoke for many when he noted simply: “Talent retention is a primary concern.”

While cost pressures remain intense, the data confirms a widespread view that cutting too deeply into an organization’s muscle — it’s talent — could seriously hamstring a fast return to growth.

The other comment underscores how companies are balancing the competing needs of cost reduction and talent management: “What differentiates the winners is their ability to use a scalpel and not a machete.”

In other words, pick reduction targets carefully — whether those targets are programs or people. Smart organizations are undertaking thorough assessments to understand people’s roles and contributions — and the return on investment they’re getting from various programs — to determine how and where to make cuts without adversely affecting business results both now and over time.

This reinforces the other message coming through clearly in the data: a realistic sense of the nature of the challenge and the balancing act required to maintain engagement and performance in the face of tough financial choices. Respondents anticipated a relatively slow return on their investments in cost cutting and appeared to be prepared for continuing challenges on the cost side while doing what they can to keep employees involved and focused.

Why is it important?

Energy management is the key to saving energy in your organisation. Much of the importance of energy saving stems from the global need to save energy – this global need affects energy prices, emissions targets and legislation, all of which lead to several compelling reasons why you should save energy at your organisation specifically.

Energy management is the key to saving energy in your organisation. Much of the Expense Reduction Analysts provide practical, engineered solutions to ensure they provide workable, measurable and tangible results and a speedy ROI.

Behaviours – If you get this sorted, you’re 60% of the way there. Simple changes in behaviour can quickly lead to significant energy savings but such changes will only happen if the people are aware of the energy consumption that they have the power to control. Most people will only be motivated when you can demonstrate just how much energy they are wasting and just how much potential there is for them to improve.

Use smart technology to do more with less – Whether this involves investing in simple high efficiency energy saving lighting, installing active lighting controls or improving your boiler efficiency we can assist you to evaluate which of the technologies present the biggest opportunities and what financial benefits they will deliver. Whether it means simply replacing light bulbs or a full blown building management system, our energy management specialist will help you to make the right choice.

Unit rates for energy – Are you paying competitive rates for your gas and electricity? Our dedicated team have the expertise and industry contacts to ensure you get the most competitive rates.

Sustainable Energy Sources – Whether you are considering solar thermal water heating, photovoltaic electricity generation or even wind turbines, choosing the right system that delivers actual benefits and a return on your investment – Expense Reduction Analysts can help you to fairly assess the benefits without being influenced by the sales talk.

“You don’t need your building’s occupants to gain a holistic awareness of energy consumption; you just need them to understand enough to stop wasting energy themselves!”

Making Sense of the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme – The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme is a government-managed carbon-trading scheme that aims to reduce the energy consumption of larger UK businesses and public-sector organisations.

The CRC scheme can seem complicated but our energy management specialists will cut through the jargon and help you through the minefield.

Continuous Improvement – To continuously improve your energy management, you need to be able to measure and manage your energy consumption – how can we help you to do this?

1. Measuring your energy consumption

2. Finding and quantifying opportunities to save energy

3. Targeting the opportunities to save energy

4. Tracking your progress at saving energy

Managing your energy consumption effectively is an ongoing process…

Our robust management tools enable us to provide concise data to assist you to manage the information without overloading you with large amounts of data.

Expense Reduction Analysts custom tool

We can measure and report on your results as regularly as you like, which will enable us to;

• Study your patterns of energy usage to identify wastage, to find opportunities for change and to suggest areas for improvement.
• Look for changes in your energy performance to evaluate the effect of improvements that you’ve made, to check whether your targets are being met and to provide evidence of your progress.

Such monitoring and targeting will improve your energy efficiency, reduce your carbon emissions and increase your profitability.

To find out more or talk to our Energy Management specialists Ian Morrison & Steve Clamp,

please contact Expense Reduction Analysts.

“We provide you with the information, so you can you make reliable choices about where to focus your time and money to deliver the best possible energy management results.”

Hybrid printing and mail what is it and how can it help my organisation save money

You’re probably familiar with VOIP (voice over IP) as used in Skype calls for reducing your telephone costs, but you many not be aware of PoIP (Post over IP), perhaps better known as ‘Hybrid mail’. Whichever you choose to call it, it can cut your print and mail costs by up to 60%. The term hybrid mail has been used in the printing industry for a few years now and until recently was only available to large organisations who produced and mailed millions of items of mail a year, but with improved digital printing technology hybrid mail is now accessible to all organisations regardless of size.

Organisations who send out regular communications be it appointment letters/cards, supporting marketing material, mailers, statements and invoices or reminder letters then hybrid mail should be considered as a serious option in reducing costs without the loss of service to your clients. If you take into account the total cost of printing and mailing your current documents, you may be quite astonished on the true cost of the service, an indication is provided in the vendor example. It indicates a simple letter or an invoice to a client sent traditionally then multiplied by a few hundred items a day can build up quite a cost to an organisation. Like all processes within an organisation, could it be done differently and challenged?

To outline the process, the user utilises the on-line tool provided by the print supplier. Data is simply sent to your chosen print provider in the same way you would select a desktop printer from your office. Select the type of document to be printed from your predefined templates, upload the data and that’s it, job done.

The print service provider will print your document at a highly secure printing hub, insert into the envelopes, address and send out in the post as per our agreed Service Level Agreement (sla) – all within your branding and corporate guidelines.

As the print provider is providing the service for a number of clients, you benefit from the maximum postage discounts and the provider will even optimise the sorting of the mail into geographical areas for further postal discounts whilst also reducing the carbon footprint of traditional mail.

All print providers work with encrypted data to ensure data security at all times and for financial institutes, most suppliers operate to APACS and ISO27001 standards.

For those organisations that have their own internal mail rooms, then hybrid mail can provide an even more cost effective solution, not only freeing up resources that could be utilised elsewhere within the organisation but also releasing valuable office space to revenue generating occupancy.

This article is from the latest Pixels2Print publication from our resident print experts. You can download a copy by clicking here.

2012 is already starting off where last year finished off with confidence in the printing sector remaining pessimistic. Within the last month, we have seen the demise of Stewarts in Edinburgh, ODC, the master franchiser of Kall Kwik and Prontaprint go into administration, as well as BGP, Butler, Tanner & Dennis, Polestar and the Wyndeham Group announcing large workforce consolidations and here we are not even halfway into January yet.

In a recent Printweek poll, 56% of those surveyed said that 2012 will be a worse year than 2011, whilst only 31% remained optimistic within the industry.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom; continual advancement in the quality, speed and flexibility of digital technology and the investment by many print organisations in adding value services such as ‘cross media’ solutions is breathing new life into an industry that was supposedly moving towards supporting paperless offices in the 1980s.

Organisations are even more focused on best value from their print and marketing communications and maximising return on investment in the same way that an organisation would review the performance of the personnel within their sales teams.

Direct marketing, despite historically been saddled with the term ‘junk mail’, is developing into sophisticated personalised one on one marketing tools that can generate substantial revenue and income to an organisation, take the likes of the successful Tesco’s Clubcard campaigns. Print is a long way from being dead.

Therefore, with such rapid changes in technology and larger reliance on data services, combined with complex fulfilment and postal services, print can be an extremely complex and difficult to benchmark, monitor and measure best value. Combined with a decline in the print specific knowledge available within personnel now buying print services, it’s clear that this certainly is an area that organisations could be challenged.

It appears the questions are: If your print vendors are providing you with complex print projects, do you know if you are really getting best value? When was the last time you benchmarked and are you able to measure?

If the answer to any of these is ‘No’ or ‘Unsure’, then the print team at Expense Reduction Analysts can help you challenge in 2012.

This article is from the latest edition of Pixels2Print, a publication provided by our resident print experts. You can download a copy for free by clicking here

Good marketing is only one of the factors that lead to business success. There are three others that are also essential…

Factor 1

The quality and professionalism of your service. The better your service, the higher the demand. The better the quality, the more success you will see. This doesn’t guarantee success but it’s hard to have it without it.

Factor 2

Your mindset or attitude. This isn’t about positive thinking, but thinking that is aware and awake. Those who can stand calmly amidst outer chaos and confusion, make good decisions and take effective actions, despite fears and doubts, will always triumph.

Factor 3

The ability to communicate the value of your services. Marketing is all about getting your message across in such a way that it generates enough attention and interest to move people into action. Almost anyone can be a better marketer. And the worse the economy, the more important it is.

(Courtesy Will Kintish)

They are QR (Quick Response) codes, also known as 2D bar codes, and may appear in magazines, on signs, on buses, on business cards, or on almost any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser.

Many Android, Nokia, and Blackberry handsets come with QR code readers installed. QR reader software is available for most mobile platforms. Moreover, there are a number of online QR code generators which enable users to create QR codes for their own needs.

However, there have been warnings from mobile security firms, who are urging caution over the use of QR Codes on smartphones, claiming that they could become a likely target for hackers and malicious users. So watch out, because while QR codes make things run faster and easier, they can also pose a threat to your mobile security as you don’t know what you are downloading until it’s on your phone already. Nobody would use a laptop without some sort of specific anti-virus and internet security, but how secure is your smartphone?

Rather than the more traditional marketing methods, building a network of referral sources can provide a cost effective route to potential new clients.

However, productive networking is not just about handing out business cards. Here are 5 Top Tips to effective networking:

1. Be visible and well-liked! Know lots of people and be sure they know you.

2. You have to give before you can expect to receive, so be known as a generous person with lots to give.

3. Reach beyond your “inner circle” for business connections. Look to anyone who connects with lots of people and who does not compete with you as a potential partner.

4. Make sure your networking connections are mutually beneficial. Referring clients must make business sense to both sides, so make sure your work provides additional income, or other benefits for your referral sources.

5. Remember, most successful businesses only need 3-5 great referral sources. Select and cultivate them wisely and patiently, it will pay huge dividends and reduce your marketing costs.

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in employees regularly working from away from their main place of work as the benefits of better technology become available to the many. Telecommuting of a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours.

Simply put, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. This opportunity is only likely to increase with new technologies such as the ‘Cloud’ becoming mainstream for many organisations which enables staff to access all information they need remotely from the office at any time.

Having employees work effectively away from the office certainly does have its benefits including, in some cases, a more efficient business process, better risk management and lower overheads. However, there is one cost that can also be significantly reduced when considering the telecommuting approach; property costs.

“We typically find, that organisations have already begun to implement policies where there employees can work remotely, or directly engaging with clients. However, as a result, they are then left with residual high property costs which they are unaware how to manage, and this can then become a significant drain on resources, which many feel is completely unmanageable”, says Andrew Pegg, Property Consultant for Expense Reduction Analysts.

“In our experience, it does take an expert to realign a client’s property portfolio, which does require a significant amount of time and expertise. The entire process can be extremely costly and involve lengthy lease agreements that are not easy to understand. However, most of our clients agree a contingency ‘No Saving – No Fee’ arrangement, so the cost is managed efficiently from the start”, said Andrew.

Certainly, telecommuting will presents an organisation with fresh challenges such as managing team working, providing “face time” to share knowledge and build relationships which in turn means that the role and function of the office has to evolve, and new skills have to be learnt.

“Overall, telecommuting can be an extremely effective way of making cost savings, and when combined with an intelligent business restructuring, IT and property realignment programme, the benefits to an organisation can be huge”, said Andrew.

2011 has seen a significant rise in UK organisations managing their courier costs more effectively with the help of Expense Reduction Analysts. This is not a surprise with the choice of suppliers increasing over recent years, and each courier offering different levels of service and price.

The following are predictions for 2012, together with how organisations can take advantage now, in streamlining their courier costs without impacting on the quality of service.

1. Domestic and international couriers are experiencing greater demand for Express Delivery options, as a result of organisations placing greater emphasis on ‘just-in-time’ logistics planning, bringing with it additional costs.
2. With fuel prices continuing to increase, UK and International couriers will be looking at strategies to offset this cost. It is predicted that increased charges or innovative surcharges may be introduced early in 2012.
3. With online sales becoming a significant revenue stream for some organisations, it brings with it additional challenges ranging from failed deliveries, the impact on customer service, through to how to deliver to international addresses cost effectively. One expected change is the introduction of time slot deliveries and consolidated international mail solutions.
4. 2012 will begin to see an increase in the amount of couriers developing applications for smart phones. Text alerts are also expected to become more common, all with extra charges the customers will be expected to absorb.
5. Organisations exporting from the UK by air may be required to comply with enhanced security checks, with the possibility of additional security surcharges.

What to do now:

1. Check to see what you are already paying for your Express Delivery packages and whether this is necessary – can these items be sent earlier by a more economical service?
2. Check for fuel surcharges, increased prices and other ‘stealth surcharges’ which begin to make their way onto your invoices – have you noticed any discrepancies? Does your courier have any planned increases in 2012?
3. Have you ‘mystery shopped’ your courier service recently to see what happens with failed deliveries and how this affects your customers? How much of your online ordering is repeat business?
4. Always adopt post dispatch management systems that proactively notify you of potential service issues. Speak to your provider about their solutions.
5. Check with your courier to see if they are introducing any security checks or surcharges in 2012.

Hitting the right note; are you aware of your broadcast music costs?

Businesses that broadcast music anywhere on their premises face the cost of broadcasting the music itself and also the associated license costs from Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) and the Performing Right Society (PRS).

A recent review by an Expense Reduction Analysts expert presented one retail client with significant savings on their broadcast music costs. Further savings are also possible through lower licensing costs should they elect to review the music content.

This market is dominated by four content suppliers who control 80% of the market between them. Most contracts contain restrictions which mitigate against clients being able to uncover their available savings. Automatic rollover of contracts with anti-competitive notice periods is common practice.

TECHNOLOGY: Recent developments in technology now allow lower cost and lower maintenance options for delivery platforms. However, most supplier contracts are over a number of years (three plus), therefore the suppliers have little incentive to migrate clients to lower cost hardware solutions. Speakers and associated electrical items tend to be, but are not always, installed and owned by the user. The scope of a project will be affected by this.

CONTENT: Content ranges from simple music through sophisticated bespoke music profiles into video and promotional visual content. This is obviously service driven, and can be a commercially sensitive decision for a business. The copyright status of the music chosen will have implications for marketing communications and licensing costs.

LICENSING: Music license costs can account for approximately 45% of total cost in this area, so they are the key cost driver and often viewed as a necessary evil.

Performing Rights Society (PRS) collects royalties on behalf of the copyright holder, which is usually the writer of the music. Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) collects royalties for artists and performers. They both apply complex tariff structures that vary by venue type.

Broadcast music and licensing is a complex area of expense in which Expense Reduction Analysts are keen to assist you.

Questions for uncovering savings:

1. Do you know what qualifies as a ‘public area’ in music licensing terms?

2. Do you know how much your organisation spends on music and licenses per annum?

3. Are you satisfied that you are playing the correct license fee?

4. Do you know what equipment you own and what is rented?

5. How much does your business spend on service calls and maintenance?