47 Tips for Cutting Costs Without Cutting Staff
22. Shift work from freelancers back to salaried staff.
Staffers are now covering some design and editorial work that a year ago would have been sent to freelancers. Kalajian’s creative director will begin helping the marketing team with promotional material, rather than sending it to outside designers. “We also write 24-30 press releases a month for small publishers as part of our publicity-service offering,” he says. “Instead of sending all those to a freelance writer, we now have an in-house staff member write half of them.”
23. Reduce UPS costs bysending files to printers via FTP.
24. Use digital proofing more often to save on the cost of creating and shipping proofs.
25. Cut marketing spending that is not showing a positive return.
Kalajian recommends giving campaigns such as lead-generation or Google AdWords no more than six months to show results.
26. Switch Web site-maintenance services to a firm that bills in quarter-hour increments.
Jenkins Group has found that some firms charge $100/hour in half-hour increments, while others charge the same hourly fee, but allow quarter-hour increments—a significant savings when only a small tweak to the Web site is needed.
27. Cut office cleaning staff from once a week to twice a month … and do more clean-up yourself.
28. Modify a phone plan.
Money-saving measures can include cutting unused 1-800-number fax lines, and eliminating cell phone and pooled minutes across the company.
29. Reduce monthlycompensation of principles.
30. Reduce travel costs.
Kalajian reports a dramatic reduction by eliminating all marketing trips to New York.
Tips from...
Susan Spilka, director, corporate communications, John Wiley & Sons
STM publisher Wiley has been on the cutting-edge of cost-cutting, lately forming partnerships with other publishers and institutions to deliver services and information efficiently.
