1. Performance measurement
   Adopt a performance measurement system that works for your business. Introduce specific, relevant and visible performance measures. Identify the true costs and reasons for that expenditure. Apply these key measures to the appropriate individuals in your organisation, and follow up performance on a timely basis.
    
2. People in the business
   Clarify roles and responsibilities and monitor staff utilisation measures. Review and tailor remuneration packages to meet the needs of individuals and the business. Include and inform your people – de-motivated people cost money. Compare your staffing to the skills your business needs. It may be more cost-effective to outsource certain activities, particularly skilled highly paid work, if the current staff are not fully utilised. Ensure that your management costs are in the right proportion to your profits. Benchmark your management cost against competitors and then investigate how others can manage with lower management costs.
    
3. Communication
   Ensure that communication flows between teams, particularly customer-facing and internal services teams. Eliminate bottlenecks in information flows and production processes - delay is often a hidden, yet significant cost.
    
4. Customer review
   Investigate if any customers are costing your business money, either through high costs/low margins, or through taking extended credit. Review margins achieved and customer handling time/costs, and consider remedial action such as raising prices. Prioritise and target credit control - uncollected and overdue debts are often a forgotten cost.
    
5. Supplier review
   Examine the criteria for using suppliers and measuring suppliers' performance. Consider:

   	delivery improvements
   	discounts (payment/volume)
   	payment terms
   	consignment stocking.

   Explain to your key suppliers that you are reviewing your cost base and ask how they can help to save money. Let them know that you regularly talk to other suppliers, and that you are prepared to put work out to tender.
    

6. Procurement
   Ensure that there is always a clear business case for any new expenditure. Use zero-based budgeting to ensure that a clear business case is made for repeat expenditure to break spending habits – i.e. every cost must be justified at the start of each year. Centralise purchasing authorities. Reduce or eliminate staff and management discretionary spending and set purchasing limits. Make it an accountable function to remain within budget whilst meeting quality criteria, ensuring all purchases are fit for purpose and delivered on time. Negotiate and take advantage of cash, bulk-buy or settlement discounts. However, you should seek to maintain a balance between meeting the need and achieving best price, e.g. consider whether volume discounts really result in a saving.
    
7. Overhead and administration
   Examine the overhead costs and the extent to which support costs may be unnecessarily duplicated, e.g. you may be operating from two properties for purely historic reasons. Review space utilisation with a view to sub-letting or disposing of any excess space where possible. Investigate whether space can be created at minimal cost by reviewing layout, e.g. by moving to an open plan layout. Look carefully at the company's borrowings. Compare interest rates across all sources of finance and rationalise borrowings towards the cheapest. Review the group structure to ensure that it is appropriate. There may be commercial reasons for operating through more than one company, but it increases costs and requires additional resource to maintain accounting records, prepare tax computations and have audits for separate entities.
    
8. Finance and asset management
   Review plant and asset utilisation. Evaluate whether any excess capacity is costing or could be earning money. Consider disposals of any surplus assets, or alternative ways of financing under-used assets, e.g. leasing or hiring assets at lower cost.
    
9. Maintenance measures
   Implement programmed equipment maintenance routines and review existing maintenance agreements. Reactive measures not only incur direct cost but can also cost your business in terms of time, delays and customer satisfaction.
    
10. Workflow management
    Introduce a framework for job processing and management. Review your procedures for managing work against people and production capacity. Check job hours to identify bottlenecks and delays early.

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