If it’s not essential, why spend it?
Most businesses spend somewhere between 70% – 80% of total costs with their suppliers. That is a significant amount and sometimes can become habitual rather than directly aligned to corporate objectives. Stop Cost services are designed to take a zero-base budgeting (ZBB) style approach to ongoing expenditure, challenging budgets, and spend in real-time to cut out waste and ensure that spend is aligned to business objectives.
Take control of spend and commercial culture
Procurement functions have a good grasp on key suppliers and contracts, but often this falls away in the mid-tail, still spend significant numbers, but too high in volume for procurement to influence. Traditional and emerging technology solutions like marketplaces and spot buys can help an organization to buy better. Still, they do not challenge the fundamental principle of “are we spending on the right things, in a cost-conscious way?” Stop Cost, gets to the heart of commercial culture, working collaboratively with the budget holder and finance to cut out waste. We bring:
- A method and process model for implementing Stop Cost.
- Benchmarks and expertise to constructively challenge cost and suggest alternatives.
- Market knowledge for how to make legacy process improvements.
Delivering positive change – The Proxima approach
Stop Cost is most often deployed when there is a need to drive short-term savings and reset the commercial culture. It also needs executive-level participation and commitment from finance and budget holders to work constructively. Spend is reviewed against business drivers such as growth, brand/reputation, customer service, keep the lights on, compliance. We deliver:
- An assessment of where to focus and briefing of leadership, finance and budget holders.
- Set up and initial facilitation of the Stop Cost process and governance group.
- Capacity and capability to challenge suppliers on cost where appropriate.