How technology can reduce costs in the workplace

For many companies in Australia, optimisation of spend and a reduction in costs has become a vital step in ensuring that their business continues to operate effectively during the current pandemic. Competitive performance is critical, and keeping costs under control is an important step in healthy business operations. In this article, we examine investment in technology and how it can reduce business costs.

Monitoring company spend and company activity

Understanding the cost of doing business is an important first step when monitoring company spend. Before making cost-cutting decisions, leaders should first understand the processes currently employed within their organisations. Having clear visibility of business operations is key to discovering where inefficiencies may be occurring. 

Data and knowledge around working practices are some of the most productive ways to understand costs and the opportunity for cost savings. It becomes much easier to identify cost reductions without significant adverse effects to employees, customers or your business as a whole. For example, manual processes often involve unnecessary or duplicate tasks. When managers and finance leaders have sufficient knowledge and visibility about a company’s production processes, they can make more efficient spending cuts. Identifying and mapping processes and areas of inefficiency are a good place to start when considering how to reduce costs.

The role of technology within the business

Investment in technology and innovation is fundamental for organisations today. Even small companies need to keep pace with increasing consumer demand and disruptive competition. The use of cloud computing software and digital tools has directly been able to contribute to financial management and control. From an operational point of view, technology has been utilised to optimise profitability in many companies.

How technology can help cut company costs

Here are some of the key best practices for implementing technology to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. 

• Reduction of material costs

One of the simplest and most effective ways to cut costs within the company with the support of technology is to reduce material costs. A clear example of this is moving towards digital documentation and working to make your organisation paperless. Lowering the cost of paper, ink, printing, postage, and transportation can reduce costs significantly. Digital transformation of manual, paper processes can also accelerate the speed of doing business.

• Better use of time

Increasing productivity is an obvious way of maximising profit, and using technology offers a clear path to increase the amount of work an individual can do. Automating manual processes can speed up vital processes like collaboration, employee onboarding, contract negotiation, acquisition of new customers and more. Adopting technology can help to make entire teams more agile and effective. 

• Reduction of bureaucracy

Bureaucracy and administration is often one of the main drains of company resources. The cost of doing business can impact company performance. In a Forrester study commissioned by DocuSign called the State of Systems of Agreement, respondents who had begun to implement automated digital agreements to replace administrative tasks highlighted the improvements that had been made to efficiency. 45% of respondents reported time savings and 48% reported a reduction in the rate of errors. Technology can help to simplify business processes and reduce the amount of administration required to complete tasks. 

Next steps for adopting technology

It’s easy to see how an investment in technology can reduce costs and increase profitability. There are so many options available that allow you to improve the efficiency of your operations. The DocuSign Agreement Cloud eliminates paper, automates processes and connects to other systems you already use. See how the DocuSign Agreement Cloud is helping Unilever or, learn more about it and how the it can help your organisation.