A profit improvement exercise can involve spending more money but still improve the bottom line!

When you think of profit improvement and accountants do you automatically think cost cutting?! Of marketing, training and staff – in fact anything of any long term value?

Well that’s understandable – in my previous incarnation as a Finance Director I had to play the grim reaper a few times.

In my first job as a FD we had a major “profit improvement exercise” – yes, we cut staff numbers and also other costs – we indeed slashed marketing! It was a mail order business and at the time we were losing lots of money; in fact, we learned later that if the exercise wasn’t successful we were going to be closed. For mail order now read eCommerce. It was our catalogue mailing order segments that simply weren’t performing…..by carefully targeting profitable segments only we saved huge amounts of money. In contrast we instead invested in a policy of sending out orders part complete and the rest of the order when we had it in stock. Previously we waited until the whole order was in stock and therefore “complete” before despatching the order. Our postage costs went up but so did our customer satisfaction and our profit – lower turnover/higher profits!

The business quickly went on to make a lot of money in the next few years.

In Sanders Geeson’s profit improvement exercises we not only look at overheads we also look at customer retention, getting more from each customer, getting more from your marketing, maximising production efficiency, managing your stock and debtors and buying better! And we help prioritise the important initiatives.

At Sanders Geeson we can help you come up with an action plan for saving you money and building your business!

Contact Jan on 07890 239442, jan@sandersgeeson.co.uk