Money-saving tips for small Devon businesses

As restrictions are easing up across the country, many businesses are reopening or getting ready to reopen. While many are cautiously optimistic about the coming months, the current pandemic has had a massive financial impact on most sectors, particularly small, independent businesses.

If your business, like hundreds of other businesses, has been affected, you may be looking at ways to reduce your operating costs to get back on your feet or simply save more money in the long term. Whatever your reason, there are many small but significant changes you could make to help your business save money.

Be more sustainable

Usually, when business owners hear the term sustainability they think about hefty setup costs and major changes to a business model. While it can sometimes be the case, there are many different ways to be more sustainable and it does not always have to implicate major changes or high costs. Sustainability is often about reducing waste or how much resources you are using, which in terms can also translate into saving money.

If you run a manufacturing business, you could look at reducing plastic or packaging in your processes or finding more efficient ways of transporting items to reduce carbon emissions, for example. Office-based businesses could also benefit from reviewing whether they could reduce their use of paper, offer reusable bottles instead of plastic bottles or encourage employees to carpool or use public transport when possible.

The big principles ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ are useful to keep in mind when putting plans in place to become more sustainable. Whether you are looking to improve your recycling programme, reduce your waste or carbon emissions, remember that every little change you make will contribute to protecting the environment while saving money.

Review your suppliers

Reviewing contracts and agreements with suppliers can play a major role in saving money. Most businesses don’t take the time to renegotiate contracts and end up paying for the same level of service without knowing if this is still what they need or not.

Assess whether your requirements have changed and see if your current contracts can be renewed to reflect these changes. This will help you save money and also avoid waste resources if your needs evolve.

This is also true for energy and water suppliers. If most of us take bills for granted, it’s important to realise that you can switch your water supplier or energy provider if you’re not satisfied with their service – or simply are looking for a better tariff. Most providers now also go beyond competing on tariff and offer an array of complementary services to help businesses use their energy and water more efficiently, hence reducing their bills. This can quickly add up in the long term so if you haven’t looked into this already, we highly recommend comparing different water suppliers and energy providers to see how they could help your business.

There are of course many other ways businesses can save money, but we hope that what we have covered in this article will help you as you get ready to welcome customers and employees again.

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