Reducing costs is an issue on the minds of many business leaders, from the CFO down to the facilities manager. Boosting productivity with increasingly limited resources is something many facilities teams and senior leaders struggle to do. Budget cuts, reduced staff and labor shortages in the facilities and construction sector make it all the more difficult to hit KPIs and accomplish key business goals.
One way to alleviate the pressure of these burdens is to avoid waste—wasted resources, wasted materials and wasted expenditures—by trimming your operating costs. Here are a few cost saving tips to help you curb wasteful practices and reduce your facilities spend:
Prioritize Energy Efficiency
You don’t have to replace every light with an LED bulb or switch to solar power to become more energy efficient. While investing in leaner, greener technologies will certainly yield significant cost savings in the long run, you can do things in the short term, too, that can make a sizable impact.
Controlling your heating and cooling use is simple, yet extremely effective. This means not only monitoring usage, but maintaining the equipment used to power these systems. Facilities that implement proper HVAC maintenance end up using 15 to 20 percent less energy, which directly impacts their budget.
Stay on top of your preventive HVAC maintenance program by tracking asset data including equipment age, model and repair history. This will help ensure your equipment is operating at peak efficiency at all times.
In addition, you can take these small steps toward wasting less energy across your facilities:
- Take advantage of heat from the sun by allowing sunlight to enter buildings, especially from south-facing windows during the day
- Find and seal air leaks around doors and windows
- Lower your water heater temperature
- Adjust thermostats throughout the day, rather than letting them run on an “auto” setting
Save Time to Save Money
We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” and if you’ve ever run a business with multiple facilities, you know this axiom proves true. Time is a precious resource, and when it’s wasted, it can negatively affect your organization’s bottom line.
Facilities professionals often find themselves wasting time through no fault of their own. Sifting through piles of paperwork or disjointed systems to find pertinent project details consumes a large part of any facilities manager’s (FM) time—time that could be better spent on strategic initiatives. Solve this problem with a holistic platform that allows FMs to access real-time data with the click of a button. Senior leadership can benefit, too, as they will also have access to big picture data housed within the platform that can inform budgets and long-term plans.
Equipment downtime also contributes to inflated costs; in fact, unplanned downtimes cost a collective total of $50 billion every year. Tracking equipment usage and service requests will help prevent downtime, which will enable your facilities team to act proactively rather than reactively, saving time and money in the process.
Putting the proper maintenance strategies in place can improve the productivity of your facilities team and save money on both the individual store and organization-wide level. Reducing all forms of waste will lead to substantial cost savings, which is a win for the facilities staff and senior leaders alike.
Get a full 360° view of your operating expenses with NEST’s Financial Consulting.
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