An economical & inexpensive way for SME’s to cut down on their overall costs is to start saving right at their office. Most businesses fail to notice that although office supplies may look like inexpensive expenditures, the total amounts actually spent on these is startling. Thus, by following a few simple tips, SME’s can easily trim their budget.
Shift from Papers to PC’s: It is high time SME’s stop using papers for documenting. Less paper means, less documenting, less clutter & less time wasted in printing. It’s time to allow technology to work for you. Instead of printing out documents & invoices, store data directly on your PC or portable hard drives. This way you can access them on your work network whenever you want. The only thing to remember here is that PC’s or cloud portal are prone to cyber attacks like firewall intrusion & viruses. Thus, it is very important that you maintain a backup of your work & update it regularly.
Connect Printers: Not every business needs multiple printers. For those who don’t, a better option is to connect the printers via Ethernet cable or WiFi that will enable multiple users to share one single printer. For the money spent on purchasing low-specification multiple printers, you may buy just one or two high-specification printers that will print fast as well as last longer.
Upgrade your PC’s: A good way to save the time & money spent behind buying new computers, is to save your PC from retiring, by upgrading it with a higher-capacity hard drive or an additional RAM. An inexpensive option, this can quickly boost the performance of your PC without any additional expenses. Businesses whose work is mostly centred around online activities & cloud computing can continue with their low-specification PC’s for as long as they can & upgrade only when required.
Stay Away from Gadget-Flu: Every SME wants to employ the latest gadgets for ease-of-work. But only the smart SME’s step back and analyze if there is really a need for these expensive purchases. If at all you require to buy a hardware or software, be careful to first consider which would be the best option for your business, instead of blindly going in for the most expensive item. Most often you tend to realize that an inexpensive product may be much more suitable for you than an expensive top-end model you may never use.
Contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar
