This time of year is exhausting for a million and one reasons. To-do lists often turn into year-end checklists or New Year’s resolutions, but I have a proposition for you. Instead of your typical goals and resolutions, step out the box. Walk away from your comfort zone and think about your facility’s efficiency in a new way. Say your goal for the New Year is to cut cost or increase gross profit. That’s a hefty goal for any business owner/operator, but how are you approaching your goal? Is there an angle you haven’t tried in cutting your cost? When was the last time you really dug into your annual door hardware spend?
The old adage “the devil’s in the details” should be your best friend when it comes to cost cutting. In order to make the biggest impact on your bottom line, let’s shed some light on details that may not be top-of-mind but add up to have a substantial impact on your P & L. You should be able to answer these questions; if you can’t, it would behoove you to gather the data. If you work with a National Service Provider, they should be able to provide it.
The simplest way to approach your door hardware spend is often times to look at your annual average spend by store broken down by region. If you are a regional director, divide your region into sub-regions such as major cities or rural versus urban areas. Often times you will begin to see trends and patterns emerge as you look at the data from this vantage point. For example, we find that average maintenance spend per store tends to be higher in urban areas.
When analyzing the door hardware spend and its relevant data, ask yourself some questions:
- Does spending increase/decrease during a certain time of year? If so, does that time line up with a major event or promotion?
- What is causing your spend to increase/decrease?
- Is there a geographical trend? This may be due to higher labor rates in certain areas of the country. Are there other factors that could cause these differences such as differences in policies and procedures or hardware?
This gives you the advantage of having a relevant starting point in making an impact in your overall financial goals for 2014. Use this worksheet [download id=”3″] to help gauge your annual cost . If you need help digesting this data or want to talk through ways you can reduce spend, send us an email or give us a call anytime.