4. Experiment with telecommuting
Telecommuting may not be realistic for all businesses, but if it’s possible for yours, consider it. It can be a big money saver. Remote workers use their own energy, and you aren’t required to have office space for them. Telecommuting allows you and your workers to focus on productivity without worrying about the overhead. And if telecommuting works for only part of your staff, that can still lead to big savings, so consider it when hiring and setting up your office space.
5. Go paperless
Go digital with all your forms and records instead of using paper. Paper isn’t free and neither are printers, ink and cartridges, nor repairs. Digital records offer a number of benefits, including making it easier to find important documents when you need them. They free you from having to worry about storing all the paper used in important business transactions for legal or tax purposes, onsite or in a warehouse, and you can securely store your records in the cloud at a fraction of the cost. In these ways, going paperless can save time and money that can be spent doing something else to advance your business. Even if you can’t go entirely paperless, you can reap many of these benefits by limiting the amount of paper your business needs to deal with.
6. Buy laptops instead of desktops
This is a roundabout way to save money, but laptops use about 90 percent less energy than a comparable desktop, and they offer mobility (good for telecommuting!) without sacrificing much in the way of usability. A laptop may not be a good option for power-hungry computational needs, such as graphic design, but it can work well for many other roles and that can save a lot of money on your energy bills.
7. Buy powerful PCs and upgrade their memory instead of replacing them
When purchasing computers for your business, go overboard. Sure, computers advance quickly, but buying extra powerful computers with a lot of memory and large monitors for your employees increases the machines’ usable life and decreases your costs in the long run because you don’t have to replace them as often. If possible, when your computers can’t keep up with the memory requirements of the newest software, look into improving their memory instead of replacing the entire machine. More or bigger memory can further extend the life of your computers.