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Top Tips
Cost-saving ideas
Top Tips for saving money
Digitise invoice processing
Valmont Stainton, the UK’s largest manufacturer of lighting columns, is saving thousands
of pounds on postage, stationery and print costs thanks to an electronic document
management system that generates PDFs of invoices and statements and automatically
emails them to customers.
The system from Epicor (formerly Solarsoft Business Systems) identifies the type of
document from its content; selects the appropriate PDF template; merges the data; picks out
customer contact details from a business system; automatically populates the subject line with
identifiable data i.e. type of document, invoice/statement/PO number; emails the PDF to single
or multiple contacts; and saves a copy for internal use.
For Valmont Stainton purchasing/IT manager Alan Bell, improvements in business processes
are just as important as cost savings: “As we now e-mail invoices, they reach the customer much
more quickly and therefore we receive payment sooner. Plus it helps us to spot any errors quickly
and rectify them immediately. Epicor has made a real difference to our business and we are saving
a day or two a month in administration time, which is incredible,” he said.
Re-negotiate credit card
processing charges
If you are a retailer, you could be paying
much more for credit and debit card
transactions than your competitors.
The Card Processing Advisory Service
(CPRAS) says that 80% of organisations are
paying significantly more for their merchant
accounts than necessary and that rates for
businesses in the same industry with similar
turnovers can differ by as much as 100%.
It offers a merchant service cost reduction
consultancy that can help firms cut card
transaction costs. One customer, Norbain
SD Ltd, is saving £12,000 a year following an
investigation by CPRAS.
CPRAS founder Graham Hallewell said: “The
way merchant providers publicise their rates is
not always clear and the charges firms pay for
processing card payments can be complex and
vary enormously from business to business.
The process can be difficult to understand and
there are many contributing factors, so it is not
easy to make informed choices.”
0845 634 7871
www.cpras.org
Don’t pay for software
you don’t use
Structural engineering firmArup has saved
£650,000 by removing unused software from
PCs and streamlining software deployment.
It is using AppClarity from 1E to find and
eliminate software that has not been used for
more than 90 consecutive days and has set up a
Shopping enterprise app store that enables users
to select and install software themselves without
troubling the IT helpdesk.
Software – Arup’s second biggest line item
after staff costs – accounts for 40% of IT spend,
with 70% spent on desktop software, such as
Adobe and Microsoft products.
Richard Barnes, global automation team lead
at Arup, said: “We were able to uninstall around
£585,000 worth of software, that’s about 17,000
installations. As well as avoiding unnecessary
software costs, we now have a transparent view
of application compliance and a simple detection
process in place to find and eliminate unused
software.”
He added: “With Shopping, we have saved
£735,000 on software deployment costs over
two years, which equates to 148,137 software
installs processed, saving more than 37,000 man
hours of IT time.We’ve also got a very happy
team of internal customers, who find using the
tool as easy as ordering from iTunes or Amazon.”
www.1e.com
Embrace social media
CrowdControlHQ, a provider of social
networking software that enables businesses
to control multiple social media profiles
from a single source, estimates that local
government organisations could save up to
£2 million by embracing the web, mobile and
other low cost technologies.
With 74% of the UK population using at
least one social channel, it argues that social
media is a good way for local councils to cut
communication costs and share information
quickly.
One body already making use of the
technology is Barnet Council. Communications
Officer Mike Langton said: “Social media
has allowed our organisation to respond to
residents’ questions and concerns efficiently,
promoting transparency and openness. As a rule
of thumb, we aim to respond to social media
questions within the same time frame as media
enquiries, demonstrating the importance and
belief we have in the medium.
“By expanding our social media presence
we have been able to give individual council
services control of their own accounts, as
they are ultimately the people on the ground
carrying out the day-to-day jobs and are
therefore better placed to answer resident
questions than corporate communications
could ever be.”
www.crowdcontrolhq.com
Eliminate manual workflows
Any company with time-consuming
manual processes can make big savings by
automating workflows.
Dutch market research company Mobiel
Centre Marktonderzoek has installed IRISCapture
Pro for Forms on its Canon MFPs to automate
the capture of survey data and cut questionnaire
processing costs by up to 80%.
Each year, the company carries out 1,000
surveys at Schiphol Airport, involving 1,000,000
contacts and 300,000 interviews. As well as
collecting data online and on iPads, it uses
paper forms that it used to process manually.
Now, all paper forms are scanned with
a Canon MFP and automatically read by
IRISCapture Pro for Forms. IRISCapture analyses
the form images and extracts the key data. Data
is then exported in CSV files allowing for quick
and easy analysis.
This has enabled Mobiel Centre
Marktonderzoek to reduce processing times
from several weeks to just two days; cut the
number of people dedicated to the task from 5
to one; improve accuracy; and ease retrieval.
www.iriscorporate.com