How To Achieve More With Less In Business: 5 Lessons From Fortune 500 Companies
Emmanuel Nnaemeka
The smartest businessmen often achieve more with less. The biggest thing any business can do itself is to spend less and earn more. One would ask if this is possible. The question lies in the type of people you employ, the business model you operate, the marketing strategies you devise and deploy, and your supply chain management.Read more about BusinessAll these factors among others will determine how much results you can achieve with fewer inputs. I have discovered that the biggest businesses do everything in their power to minimize costs and maximize opportunities and profits. They are out to save time and money and earn more. This is how they stay ahead of their competitors. In this article, I discuss what strategies to employ if you want to achieve more with less.
Outsource Business Operations
Outsourcing is when you give an integral part of your production process to experts outside your company to build and manage. Did you know that Apple, being one of the most successful and valuable companies in the world, does not have a manufacturing plant? Are you shocked? All their production is outsourced, while Sony, one of their seeming competitors, has and maintains over 57 mega manufacturing plants across the globe. Another example is Microsoft, which outsources its software maintenance to Infosys. The thing behind outsourcing is that it saves time and money. Rather than building and running a maintenance company, which will cost time to plan, build and employ talents, and money to build and install facilities, and keep it running, some ready-made experts can do this at an affordable price.
Support Causes As Form Of PR
Another way to boost your business growth and achieve more with less is by aligning your business operations with global causes. A classical example is Toms’s shoes. Its slogan, “One for One” was the brainchild of its founder, Blake Mycoskie, who visited Argentina and discovered impoverished children who went about barefooted. He chose to found comfy shoes whereby a percentage from the profit of one shoe sold would be used to get a shoe for a child without one. This was the idea behind its “One for One.” Leading companies don’t crack their heads on how to display their brands to look attractive. Rather than racking their brains and cooking up some vague vision, they simply wrap their brands around worthy causes such as “Ending World Hunger”, “End Racism”, “Climate Change”, “Back 2 School Projects” and running a business around the “Eco-friendly” mantra. Building your brand story and PR around causes is very affordable, yet it draws the admiration of millions.Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
Diversify Production Line
The easiest way to run your business is to expand your production line. As a businessperson, knowing when to expand your business line is a clever and thoughtful way of keeping your business to stay in the market for a long time. Some might ask, how can a small business diversify its product line? Is it thoughtful to diversify as a small business? The logic to this answer is simple: there are diverse needs in the marketplace, thus, providing for diverse needs boosts your income and helps you to achieve more with less. For instance, leading companies like Dangote, Berkshire Hathaway, Coca-Cola and so on have diversified their product line to achieve more financial profit without having to break the bank.
Automate Business Processes
According to Wikipedia, business process automation, also known as business automation or digital transformation, is the technology-enabled automation of complex business processes. It can streamline a business for simplicity, achieve digital transformation, increase service quality, improve service delivery or contain costs. For example, With BPA, you can incorporate file transfers into larger workflows that include tasks like encrypting and decrypting the files or entering the information they contain into an ERP system. Another example is when you automate your email inbox, you can automatically process information from your email quickly and efficiently. And you can also make sharing files easier with tasks for uploading documents to SharePoint or emailing reports to stakeholders.
Create Internal Competition Among Your Brands
Leading Fortune 500 companies often create internal competition by having three to ten brands under one industry to store with less. They dominate the market with multiple brands under one parent company. This multi-headed or hydra-head strategy is a way of attacking and overwhelming competitors. For instance, under Guinness Nig, there is Guinness extra stout, Harp, Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Baileys, Smirnoff, Gordon’s Dry Gin, Satzenbrau, Dubic Malt, Malta Guinness, Orijin Non-alcoholic Zero, Orijin and MrDowell’s. Further, by having multiple brands under one niche, you can pitch them against themselves through various marketing campaigns and ads. For instance, customers often find themselves caught between drinking Harp and Guinness. By having multiple brands under your company, you can easily dominate the market and rout out competitors, give your customers multiple options and stay afloat, earning more for doing less.Featured image source: LogoDix LogoGot a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
