Cost Cutting
What Is Cost Cutting?
Cost cutting alludes to measures carried out by a company to reduce its expenses and further develop profitability. Cost cutting measures are normally executed during times of financial distress for a company or during economic downturns. They can likewise be sanctioned on the off chance that a company's management expects profitability issues from now on, where cost cutting can then turn out to be part of the business strategy.
Figuring out Cost Cutting
Shareholders who look for maximum monetary returns on their investments in a company expect that management will keep up with growth in profits. At the point when the business cycle is on a rise, companies are generally able to create profit growth. Nonetheless, on a downswing, profits might fall and in the event that they stay down for delayed periods, management would feel the pressure from shareholders to cut costs with an end goal to prop up the reality.
Cost cutting measures might incorporate laying off employees, diminishing employee pay, closing facilities, smoothing out the supply chain, downsizing to a more modest office, or moving to a more affordable building or area, lessening or dispensing with outside professional services, like advertising agencies and contractors, and so on.
Executing new technology can likewise be viewed as a cost cutting method. For instance, another machine might supplant a certain number of employees, cutting labor costs, where the cost of the machine is made up after a certain period of season of not causing labor costs.
Cost Cutting Strategy
While leaving on cost cutting, executing a strategy before randomly cutting costs is important. A few costs are essential, so it's important to group costs into great costs, terrible costs, and best costs.
Great costs center around the company's growth and are lined up with the company's customers and how to address the issues of those customers. Awful costs are those that don't match up with the company's growth strategy, and waste resources. At the point when terrible costs are cut, they can free up resources that can be utilized in a more useful capacity. Best costs are the costs associated with what makes a company unique, how it separates itself from the competition, and how it offers true benefit to its customers.
When a company can distribute its cost into one of the above groupings, it will make it simpler to zero in on cutting terrible costs and boosting on best costs.
It's likewise important to note that cost cutting doesn't be guaranteed to mean totally cutting a cost. It can likewise allude to optimization and effectiveness. Advancing productivity really reduces costs, so estimating productivity is important. Today there are applications that permit companies to monitor the productivity of employees as well as time spent on various work and tasks.
Risks of Too Much Cost Cutting
Since salaries and wages are a large expense, many companies look to layoffs first as a cost cutting measure when times are lean. Nonetheless, there are numerous real or potential costs associated with terminating individuals, including severance pay, unemployment benefits, rehiring costs, wrongful termination lawsuits, bringing down of assurance, and the risk of workaholic behavior remaining employees.
Furthermore, on the off chance that the business pivots quicker than management had expected, the company could wind up with a shortage of labor, setting the company in a difficult spot in a further developing business environment. Likewise, in the event that a factory was closed in a recent round of cost cutting, the company might not have adequate production capacity to answer a sudden increase in orders. This all factors into guaranteeing a company has a sound and adaptable cost cutting strategy.
Features
- Cost cutting is a measure taken by a company to reduce its expenses and further develop profitability.
- As part of a cost cutting strategy, it's important for a company not to over cut costs, leaving it unprepared for increased demand or in a position where it might cause more costs.
- Cost cutting measures can incorporate laying off employees, closing facilities, downsizing offices, and smoothing out the supply chain.
- While setting out on cost cutting it's important to have a cost cutting strategy that groups costs as terrible costs, great costs, and best costs.
- At the point when a company is in financial distress or there is an economic downturn is when companies are probably going to sanction cost cutting measures.