Dr. Jody Freedman, Preventacare
I’m the founder of Preventacare, a team of health, fitness and ergonomic professionals creating healthier workplaces. Using innovative thinking, we craft customized wellness programs to fit corporations of all shapes and sizes.
The challenge of creating comprehensive wellness programs for companies on a tight budget has always had us looking at ways we can reduce our own costs. Two areas where we have consistently found the greatest savings opportunities have been in administration and technology.
One of our biggest costs in delivering health, fitness and ergonomic programming was in the program administration. This was most obvious with large clients, where fitness classes and health services could generate hundreds of weekly inquiry e-mails and payment requests. Our solution was to create individualized wellness websites for our clients, complete with detailed program information and an integrated online booking and payment system. The initial investment paid off greatly, resulting in both reduced administration costs and increased employee awareness of the wellness programs.
As our client base grew, so did the challenge of maintaining communication with our clients and our growing team of health and fitness professionals. Traditional options for e-mail, calendar, and customer-relationship software were not only expensive, but also required ongoing IT support.
To manage our communications, we instead chose to use online applications from Google Apps, Zoho, and Manymoon. In addition to being free or very low-cost, being online allows our busy team to access their data from wherever they are.
In administration costs, we saved $1,500 on our initial website development, and $125 a month with our online booking and payment system, Mindbody Online/Moneris. And, we saved $800-$1,500 in administrative staffing costs per month, per client.
The technology side yields yet more savings. Google Apps – Gmail, word processing, Google Calendar – are all free. So is Manymoon Project Management. Our customer relationship management software, Zoho CRM, costs a mere $15 per user month.
Using traditional software would have cost us thousands more. For example Microsoft Exchange Server is in the thousands of dollars. Microsoft Office Suite wold have cost us $200 per licence plus continued upgrades. Using Salesforce.com or a traditional CRM would have cost us $100+/per user, per month.
Visit: Preventacare.ca.
Toby Barazzuol, Eclipse Awards
I’m the founder of Eclipse Awards, a world-class supplier of personalized recognition awards in crystal, glass and reclaimed materials.
Over the past 18 months at Eclipse Awards, we have reframed our approach to business. Our philosophy at Eclipse Awards, that “austerity is the new bling,” underlines our commitment to sustainability. We’re really focused on creating more value out of fewer resources, and using those resources more efficiently. Some initiatives we’ve undertaken to run leaner have included:
• Lowering our on-site inventory levels ($30,000 in savings).
• Paying down our short-term credit lines and credit cards (close to $15,000 in savings).
• Co-sharing some of our work space and staff with Saul Good Gift Co. (close to $15,000 in savings).
• Getting rid of our company car (over $12,000 in savings).
• Installing skylights in our office to reduce electrical use and create a more healthy and inspiring workplace.
• Designing a new line of green awards that use local reclaimed wood and glass.
We’ve also joined the province’s work-sharing program and changed to a four-day workweek. Not only has this forced us to become more efficient while we’re in the office, it’s also created a better work-life balance for our staff – so much so that we’re unlikely to go back to a five-day week.
The past 18 months have been a learning experience, creating new opportunities, while also improving how we look at our business. It’s all about creating the most value out of the fewest resources, and that’s something that we celebrate.
Visit Eclipse Awards: www.eclipseawards.com.
Haig Armen, LiFT
LiFT is an interaction design studio in Vancouver. Our team comprises designers, developers, artists and musicians with a passion for creating experiences that compel and delight. We partner with amazing clients from around the world and craft custom digital solutions for their products and services. Some of our clients include the Vancouver Aquarium, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and Douglas & McIntyre Publishing.
1. Online project management.
LiFT Studios often consults businesses on streamlining workflow and management. We’re constantly researching the most effective open-source project-management solutions. We use Basecamp, ProjectPier and SlimTimer, which give us detailed project progress reporting.
2. Using Google’s cloud.
LiFT has been using Google Apps, Google Docs and Calendars for the past few years. We have found these to be indispensable! Google Apps’ G-Mail for Business offers 25 GB of storage per user, powerful spam filtering, BlackBerry and Outlook inter-operability, and a 99.9 percent uptime.
Compared to Microsoft’s Office, Google Docs is a dream. For starters, it’s free. Plus, it can be shared among people within your company or outside. Google Calendar events allow you to send out free notifications that are compatible with a variety of desktop calendar apps.
3. A studio in East Vancouver.
LiFT Studios’ first location in Gastown, barely housing four desks, was expensive. We moved to a huge old converted warehouse space in a heritage artists’ neighbourhood off Commercial Drive. The new LiFT location reduces monthly rent and is a 15-minute bus ride from downtown. It gives our clients ample parking space for meetings.
Visit LiFT Studios, www.liftstudios.ca.
Boyan Blocka and Andrea Jacques, Kyosei Consulting
Kyosei Consulting helps small businesses to play big, and big businesses to stand out. Our expertise includes: training, executive coaching, marketing and digital media, organizational development/optimization, retirement, and leadership. Our nifty clients include: Blenz Coffee, Business Objects/SAP, Google, Nokia, VanCity, VANOC and more.
It may sound clichéd, but our operational efficiency (because thrift sounds so cheap!) is motivated by the need to live up to our company name. “Kyosei” is Japanese for living and working together for the common good.
To that end, our new office is a source of pride for us, as we manage to push a huge amount of work through a relatively modest space at a fraction of the cost of a typical downtown office.
Our office is located in the same building as our residence. This is a key and useful constraint. Not only have we saved time and money commuting – all of 15 seconds if the stairwell’s busy! – our WIFI, VOIP, wireless phones, and cloud-based systems (dashboards, CRM, project management, invoicing) let us work with much more flexibility.
We’ll do tea and team meetings in our living room, coaching from the café down the street – and save on the nitty-gritty (remote business coaching, multimedia design) for the office itself. If we want to go on vacation or a work vacation, our office, including phone systems, is available wherever there’s a good Internet connection. Simple.
All this – and it’s cheaper and less stressful, too. Amazing!
Visit Kyosei: www.kyoseiconsulting.com.
Byron Sheardown, International Web Express
International Web Express (IWE) is a newspaper printer located in Coquitlam. We print 17 different language newspapers and specialize in printing community publications and independent media.
Since I took over IWE in March of 2009, we have gone from 15 to 40 employees, and more than doubled our revenue. In addition to the chaos of training new employees, the old system of managing customer jobs (a.k.a., dockets) was a manual paper-based system, and customer jobs often had mistakes. Those mistakes came straight out of the company’s narrow margins.
Since November 2009, IWE has implemented a server-based system that monitors in real time all aspects of the work flow in the building, coupled with invoicing and inventory. All labour – and all waste – are tracked and searchable by date or by customer to ensure accurate pricing. The staff loves the ability to use computer stations rather than hand-written reports, and they can check the current schedules.
Monika Marcovici, an engineer – and my partner in life and with the company – developed the system, estimated to be worth $45,000 in development. But systems will be sold for approximately $12,000 or more, depending on the level of customizing.
Using Dashboard, we go with the flow! Based on historical average losses, we estimate that, since implementing the Dashboard system, we have saved over $3,000 per month on mistakes avoided by the electronic system, and another $2,000 in catching monthly billing errors. Extra charges in manufacturing and all purchase orders are viewable at the time of invoicing, so nothing is left out.
Visit International Web Express: www.intwebexpress.com.