As a CEO or Functional Head, you have to manage costs effectively. Your organisation's success, along with your personal reputation, is dependent on smart handling of the 'purse strings'.
Real life intervenes
Occasionally, however, events occur which force a radical rethink about the way your business is structured, some examples could be:
• Your organisation might be merging / de-merging
• Competitors slash prices
• Profits are tumbling
Many of our clients approach us when they need to reduce cost rapidly. At 7days our approach to cost reduction can be summed up as a dual focus on helping organisations become more efficient, but also more effective with its resource utilisation, so that it can rise above challenging events.
It is virtually impossible to 'cut' your way to a successful organisation; however, you can successfully reduce costs and refocus investment on the right things to optimise resource usage and achieve your business goals. At 7days, we believe that your focus must always be on leaving your organisation "fitter," and able to thrive rather than just survive your cost reduction efforts.
We look at cost reduction from the context of meeting both customer and internal stakeholder needs. This enables us quickly to identify the critical elements of your business that add most value to customers as well as those that don't. Similarly, we assess those critical services most in demand from your internal stakeholders without which your business would grind to a halt.
How we go about it
We work with you, providing expert industry, organisation and financial analytical skills. We also provide a robust cost reduction methodology in the shape of the 7days Organisation Effectiveness Model. This is a pragmatic and highly objective framework that we use to facilitate our clients to identify cost reduction (and other improvement opportunities) whilst always keeping a clear line of sight to the customer. It enables objective evaluation of opportunities and solutions in a way that addresses the entire value chain and business model.
We work with your Functional Heads, either on a one-to-one basis, or in expertly facilitated working sessions, to examine the 'as-is' and evolve a solution, which could be driven by questions such as;
• What are the 'real' needs of your internal and external customers?
• Have your processes failed to evolve with advances in technology or shifts in channel usage? (e.g. the Internet)
• Have the demographics of your work force not evolved with the business environment? Do you have too many "high cost" people doing jobs that can be done with cheaper resources?
• Is there duplication of activities in different areas of your business that can be reduced or eliminated altogether?
• Is your management structure and organisation structure too complex given the demands on your business?
• Have your operating policies and practices evolved with the business' requirements?
Our framework enables us to evaluate these and other hypotheses in a structured and objective fashion and ensure that we leave "no stone unturned" in identifying all possible cost reduction opportunities.
7days does not always rely on just one framework or methodology when working on cost reduction projects. For example, we can also assess your business from a zero-based budget or "blank sheet of paper" approach. If you were starting from scratch, what would your ideal organisational set-up be like?
Why 7days?
We have a proven track record of taking out substantial recurring costs from operations in a broad spectrum of industries, and we put a portion of our fees at risk to prove that we 'walk the talk'.