Planning ahead in business avoids unnecessary stress and can save your company a lot of money. Budgeting is more than just figuring out how much money you have to spend on your business operations and marketing, it is an opportunity to figure out how, when and why you are spending the money. If you base your budget on a good plan, you will benefit significantly in efficiency and cost savings. It is not just about the money, budgeting is about planning ahead.
One of the greatest stresses in life in general and business in particular is when we have to do things at the last minute. By taking advantage of the budget development process, you can organize your broader schedule for an entire year and plan your activities far in advance. If you have trade shows to attend or major client meetings that are held on a regular basis, you can set up your travel and hotel plans ahead of time. If you have vendor contracts that renew, the budgeting process gives you an opportunity to schedule the negotiations well ahead of time. Having the major events planned out ahead of time relieves stress among employees.
Often, when we wait to the last minute on vendor contracts or travel planning we end up doing exactly what we did the previous year; we don’t have time to explore better options. By using the budget time to plan ahead, we give ourselves time to explore options, and come up with better ways. During the course of the year it is not uncommon to hear employees lament about how the system is slow, or doesn’t do something they need. Yet, those same systems get renewed each year simply because we run out of time to explore options. Plan ahead, and you can leave plenty of time to find the best solution, not just renew the old one.
Most suppliers provide discounts when we purchase larger quantities of their products. They can produce them more cheaply with large runs and shipping per unit is much less when shipped in bulk. They would gladly discount the price if we can order supplies in bulk. The budgeting process is a great time to plan for this and make those purchases. Whether your company attends trade shows and hands out custom usb and other promo items, or just needs to ensure your pen supply doesn’t run out, you can take advantage of bulk purchasing.
The best way to plan for bulk purchasing is to accumulate all your invoices from different suppliers for the past year. If you have multiple suppliers for a single type of item, then you will have even better negotiating power by bringing all the volume to a single supplier. They will appreciate the additional business, plus they will really like taking business from their competition. This will be great leverage for your negotiation.
In many companies the budgeting season is dreaded. But if managers and employees approach the process with the right mindset, they can help lower their own stress through the year by planning ahead and taking care of things early. If they are responsible for purchasing items, they can make themselves look good by purchasing in bulk and saving money because they planned ahead.
