We have all heard the clique “time is money” but when it comes to running a small business, it’s true, every minute lost costs you money. Small businesses made up 61% of the UK’s employers in 2021, and what’s more, technology advancements has now enabled the smallest of businesses to take advantage of the tools that were once only available for large, multinational corporations.
In today’s economic climate, it has never been more important to run your business efficiently to save both time and money, because that is the difference between profit and loss, success and failure.
We have compiled our five top tips for saving your small business time and money.
Research by CIPD has found it costs on average £6,125 to recruit an employee and typically takes around 48 days to complete the process, making recruitment both costly and time consuming. Therefore, becomes essential to retain employees and make sure you hire good people first time round, to limit the amount of recruitment that needs to take place. Building a strong work ethos, offering regular training and communication, and empowering employees can help increase motivation and keep employees focused on the job. Did you know a staggering one third of UK employees get distracted for up to three hours per day at work?
The ability to automate many mundane and time-consuming tasks has been pivotal in small business growth within the last few years and is helping to save money. Two business areas known for being “paperwork heavy” are Payroll and HR, and accounts payable (AP) departments, and automation in these areas such as self-service systems and AP automation can help to save a vast amount of time and money. Self-service systems, such as our Payroll Self Service, put the onus onto employees to manage their personal information, holiday entitlement and download their online payslips, so payroll personnel can focus their time on manual-based tasks. The rising popularity of tools such as AP automation is streamlining the way invoices are handled within organisations and making it easier to keep on top of cash flow processes and considerably speeding up the time it takes for invoices to be processed.
Computers and servers take up valuable space, and maintaining hardware can use a lot of resource, and not to mention, expertise. That’s where cloud computing comes in; by moving your systems to the cloud you can let someone else maintain the hardware, saving your business time, and save money by occupying less office space. Plus, cloud computing helps protect your business in the event of a catastrophe like fire, flood or theft as all your work is safe and secure in the cloud and can be accessed anywhere. It is estimated you can save 15% of all IT costs by moving your business systems to the cloud.
Using paper is costing UK SME’s a staggering £33,000 a year collectively, and the costs of paper usage such as printing, distribution and storage equates to an average 12% of an SME’s bottom-line. Reducing the amount of paper you use is not only good for your profitability, but benefits the planet too, and there are a vast amount of tools available now to help you run a paperless office successfully. Electronic document management and e-mail payslips will reduce the amount of time it takes to sort through documents, save valuable space and reduce costs for paper, printing and distribution, plus it’s more secure too. Reducing your paper usage is the quickest and easiest way to start saving money immediately within your business, with very little effort.
Cyber-crime has risen enormously in recent years and 51% of SME’s have fallen victim to a security breach, two thirds of which say it cost them at least £5,000. Despite this, 38% claim to have no cyber-security measures in place at all, which is a highly worrying figure considering the amount of money cyber-attacks are costing SME’s. Taking online security seriously from the start will help protect your business financially, and securely, thus protecting your business reputation and also saving you time managing the after affects of any attacks.
With the cost of living, and costs of running a business rapidly increasing, there has never been a more important time for SME’s to focus on saving time and money. The good news is, there are plenty of ways you can do this, some of which are easy to implement and can start saving you money almost immediately such as simply reducing the amount of paper you use or communicating with your employees regularly to boost morale. Others may take a little bit more time to implement but looking at automating tasks where possible such as AP and Payroll and HR can save significant time and money, and moving to cloud based processes too is another way to optimise technology to make your business more efficient.
For more information on how Pegasus solutions can help your business save time and money, please contact us today.
Posted On: January 18, 2023
